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This  book  is  due  at  the  LOUIS  R.  WILSON  LIBRAR.Y  on  the 
last  date  stamped  under  "Date  Due."  If  not  on  hold  it  may  be 
renewed  by  bringing  it  to  the  library. 

89f  i  &  ]Wh 

DATE 

DUE                      KIL1' 

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I    . 

1 

r 

THE  COMPLETE  WORKS 

OF 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTORY  ESSAY  UPON  HIS 
PHILOSOPHICAL   AND   THEOLOGICAL    OPINIONS 


EDITED   BY 

PROFESSOR  W.  G.  T.  SHEDD 


IN  SEVEN  VOLUMES 
Yol.  IV. 


tfa-s; 


c 


LECTURES  UPON  SHAKESPEARE 
AND  OTHER  DRAMATISTS 


NEW    YORK 
HARPER     &    BROTHERS,    FRANKLIN     SQUARE 

1884 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  one  thousand 
eight  hundred  and  fifty- three,  by 

Harper  &  Brothers, 

in  the  Clerk  s  uflicc  of  the  District  Court  of  the  SoutheiTi  District 
of  New  York. 


NOTES  AND  LECTURES 

UPON 

SHAKESPEARE 

AND 

SOME  OF  THE  OLD  POETS  AND  DRAMATISTS 
WITH  OTHER  LITERARY  REMAINS 

OF  S.  T.  COLEKIDGE 
EDITED  BY  MRS.  H.  N.  COLERIDGE 


TO 

JOSEPH  HENRY  GREEN,  ESQ., 

MEMBER,  OF  THE  ROYAL  COLLEGE  OF  SURGEONS, 

THE  APPROVED  FRIEND  OF  COLERIDGE 

ft  I)is     t)0ltlttt£ 

IS    GRATEFULLY   INSCRIBED. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hil 


http://archive.org/details/completeworksofs04cole 


ADVERTISEMENT 


The  present  publication  is  for  the  most  part  a  re-print  of 
volumes  i.  and  ii.  of  the  Literary  Remains,  first  published  by  my 
late  husband  in  1836.  It  consists  in  great  measure  of  notes  on 
poetry  and  dramatic  literature,  either  written  by  my  father's  own 
hand,  or  taken  down  by  others  from  his  lectures.  Of  matter  re- 
lating to  the  drama,  and  to  poetry,  however,  there  was  not  quite 
enough  to  fill  a  second  volume  ;  I  have  therefore  added  to  the 
r3marks  on  Shakspeare  and  contemporary  dramatists,  Dante, 
Milton,  and  other  poets,  some  miscellaneous  pieces,  which,  as 
being  critical  or  on  literary  subjects,  agree  generally  with  the 
main  contents  of  the  volumes.  Some  of  the  lectures  themselves, 
though  purporting  to  be  on  the  drama,  appear  miscellaneous. 
A.n  old  reviewer  of  the  Literary  Remains  inquired  how  Asiatic 
and  Greek  Mythology,  the  Kabeiri,  and  the  Samothracian  Mys- 
teries came  to  be  treated  of  in  the  same  discourse  with  Robinson 
Crusoe  ? — a  question  which  would  not  have  been  asked  by  one 
who  had  been  acquainted  with  the  author's  excursive  habits  of 
thought  and  of  speech.  His  practice  in  this  respect  has  been 
several  times  explained  and,  in  some  respects,  vindicated  by  in- 
telligent disciples,  who  had  perceived  the  subtle  logic  of  his  "  ex- 
haustive and  cyclical  mode  of  discoursing." 

The   "  Selections    from    Mr.    Coleridge's   Literary   Correspon- 


viii  ADVERTISEMENT. 

dence,"  with  the  "  Historie  and  Gestes  of  Maxilian,"  are  repub- 
lished by  permission  of  the  Messrs.  Blackwood,  to  whose  Maga- 
zine they  were  contributed  on  their  first  appearance.  Notes  of 
the  late  Editor  are  signed  Ed.,  those  of  the  present  S.  C.  The 
Preface  of  the  original  Editor  of  the  Literary  Remains  is  re-print- 
ed, with  the  exception  of  a  passage  not  applicable  to  the  present 
publication. 


PREFACE. 


Mr.  Coleridge  by  his  will,  dated  in  September,  1829,  author, 
ized  his  executor,  if  he  should  think  it  expedient,  to  publish  any 
of  the  notes  or  writing  made  by  him  (Mr.  0.)  in  his  books,  or  any 
other  of  his  manuscripts  or  writings,  or  any  letters  which  should 
thereafter  be  collected  from,  or  supplied  by,  his  friends  or  corres- 
pondents. Agreeably  to  this  authority,  an  arrangement  was 
made,  under  the  superintendence  of  Mr.  Green,  for  the  collection 
of  Coleridge's  literary  remains ;  and  at  the  same  time  the  prep- 
aration for  the  press  of  such  part  of  the  materials  as  should  con- 
sist of  criticism  and  general  literature,  was  intrusted  to  the  care 
of  the  present  Editor.  The  volume  now  offered  to  the  public 
is  the  first  result  of  that  arrangement.  It  must  in  any  case 
stand  in  need  of  much  indulgence  from  the  ingenuous  reader  ; — 
multa  sw'it  condonanda  in  opere  <postumo  ;  but  a  short  state- 
ment of  the  difficulties  attending  the  compilation  may  serve  to 
explain  some  apparent  anomalies,  and  to  preclude  some  unneces- 
sary censure. 

The  materials  were  fragmentary  in  the  extreme — Sibylline 
leaves  ; — notes  of  the  lecturer,  memoranda  of  the  investigator, 
outpourings  of  the  solitary  and  self-communing  student.  The  fear 
of  the  press  was  not  in  them.  Numerous  as  they  were  too,  they 
came  to  light,  or  were  communicated,  at  different  times,  before 
and  after  the  printing  was  commenced  ;  and  the  dates,  the  occa- 
sions, and  the  references,  in  most  instances  remained  to  be  dis- 
covered or  conjectured.  To  give  to  such  materials  method  and 
continuity,  as  far  as  might  be — to  set  them  forth  in  the  least  dis- 
advantageous manner  which  the  circumstances  would  permit — 
was  a  delicate  and  perplexing  task  ;  and  the  Editor  is  painfully 
sensible  that  he  could  bring  lew  qualifications  for  the  undertak- 


X  PREFACE. 

Ing,  but  such  as  were  involved  in  a  many  years'  intercourse  with 
the  author  himself,  a  patient  study  of  his  writings,  a  reverential 
xdmiration  of  his  genius,  and  an  affectionate  desire  to  help  in  ex- 
tending its  beneficial  influence. 

The  contents  of  this  volume  are  drawn  from  a  portion  only 
of  the  manuscripts  intrusted  to  the  Editor  :  the  remainder  of  the 
collection,  which,,  under  favorable  circumstances,  he  hopes  may 
liereafter  see  the  light,  is  at  least  of  equal  value  with  what  is 
now  presented  to  the  reader  as  a  sample.  In  perusing  the  fol- 
lowing pages,  the  reader  will,  in  a  few  instances,  meet  with  dis- 
quisitions of  a  transcendental  character,  which,  as  a  general  rule, 
have  been  avoided  :  the  truth  is,  that  they  were  sometimes  found 
so  indissolubly  intertwined  with  the  more  popular  matter  which 
preceded  and  followed,  as  to  make  separation  impracticable. 
There  are  very  many  to  whom  no  apology  will  be  necessary  in 
this  respect ;  and  the  Editor  only  adverts  to  it  for  the  purpose  of 
obviating,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  possible  complaint  of  the  more 
general  reader.  But  there  is  another  point  to  which,  taught  by 
past  experience,  he  attaches  more  importance,  and  as  to  which, 
therefore,  he  ventures  to  put  in  a  more  express  and  particular 
caution.  In  many  of  the  books  and  papers,  which  have  been 
used  in  the  compilation  of  these  volumes,  passages  from  other 
writers,  noted  down  by  Mr.  Coleridge  as  in  some  way  remark- 
able, were  mixed  up  with  his  own  comments  on  such  passages, 
or  with  his  reflections  on  other  subjects,  in  a  manner  very  em- 
barrassing to  the  eye  of  a  third  person  undertaking  to  select  the 
original  matter,  after  the  lapse  of  several  years.  The  Editor 
need  not  say  that  he  has  not  knowingly  admitted  any  thing 
that  was  not  genuine.  It  is  possible  that  some  cases  of  mistake 
in  this  respect  may  have  occurred.  There  may  be  one  or  two 
passages — they  can  not  well  be  more — printed  in  this  volume 
which  belong  to  other  writers  ;  and  if  such  there  be,  the  Editor 
can  only  plead  in  excuse,  that  the  work  has  been  prepared  by 
him  amidst  many  distractions,  and  hope  that,  in  this  instance  at 
least,  no  ungenerous  use  will  be  made  of  such  a  circumstance  to 
the  disadvantage  of  the  author,  and  that  persons  of  greater  read- 
ing or  more  retentive  memories  than  the  Editor,  who  may  dis- 
cover any  such  passages,  will  do  him  the  favor  to  communicate 
the  fact. 

To  those  who  have  been  kind  enough  to  communicate  books 


PKEFACE.  xi 

and  manuscripts  for  the  purpose  of  the  present  publication,  the 
Editor  and,  through  him,  Mr.  Coleridge's  executor  return  their 
grateful  thanks.  In  most  cases  a  specific  acknowledgment  ha? 
been  made.  But,  above  and  independently  of  all  others,  it  is  to 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gillman,  and  to  Mr.  Green  himself,  that  the  pub- 
lic are  indebted  lor  the  preservation  and  use  of  the  principal  part 
of  the  contents  of  this  volume.  The  claims  of  those  respected 
individuals  on  the  gratitude  of  the  friends  and  admirers  of  Cole- 
lidge  and  his  works  are  already  well  known,  and  in  due  season 
those  claims  will  receive  additional  confirmation. 

With  these  remarks,  sincerely  conscious  of  his  own  inadequate 
execution  of  the  task  assigned  to  him,  yet  confident  withal  of  the 
general  worth  of  the  contents  of  the  following  pages — the  Editor 
commits  the  reliques  of  a  great  man  to  the  indulgent  considera- 
tion of  the  Public. 

Lincoln's  Inn,      ) 
August  11,  1836.  J 


I'ENVOT. 

He  was  one  who  with  long  and  large  arm  still  collected  pre- 
cious arrafuls  in  whatever  direction  he  pressed  forward,  yet  still 
took  up  so  much  more  than  he  could  keep  together,  that  those 
who  followed  him  gleaned  more  from  his  continual  droppings 
than  he  himself  brought  home ; — nay,  made  stately  corn-ricks 
therewith,  while  the  reaper  himself  was  still  seen  only  with  a 
strutting  armful  of  newly-cut  sheaves.  But  I  should  misinform 
you  grossly  if  I  left  you  to  infer  that  his  collections  were  a  heap 
of  incoherent  miscellanea.  No!  the  very  contrary.  Their  va- 
riety, conjoined  with  the  too  great  coherency,  the  too  great  both 
desire  and  power  of  referring  them  in  systematic,  nay,  genetic 
subordination,  was  that  which  rendered  his  schemes  gigantic  and 
impracticable,  as  an  author,  and  his  conversation  less  instructive 
as  a  man.  Auditor  em  inopem  ipsa  copia  fecit. — Too  much  was 
given,  all  so  weighty  and  brilliant  as  to  preclude  a  chance  of  its 
being  all  re  reived — so  that  it  not  seldom  passed  over  the  hearer'f 
mind  like  a  roav  of  many  waters. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Extract  from  a  Letter  written  by  Mr.  Coleridge,  in  February,  1818, 
to  a  Gentleman  who  attended  the  Course  of  Lectures  given  in  the 

Spring  of  that  Year   17 

Extract  from  a  Letter  to  J.  Britton,  Esq 18 

Shakspeare,  with  introductory  matter  on  poetry,  the  drama,  and 

the  stage 19 

Definition  of  Poetry 19 

Greek  Drama 22 

Progress  of  the  Drama 29 

The  Drama  generally,  and  Public  Taste 39 

-  Shakspeare,  a  Poet  generally 46 

-  Shakspeare's  Judgment  equal  to  his  Genius 50 

Kecapitulation,  and  Summary  of  the  Characteristics  of  Shakspeare's 

Dramas 56 

Outline  of  an  Introductory  Lecture  upon  Shakspeare 64 

Order  of  Shakspeare's  Plays 67 

.  Notes  on  the  Tempest 72 

Love's  Labor's  Lost 79 

•  Midsummer  Night's  Dream 84 

Comedy  of  Errors 87 

As  You  Like  It 87 

Twelfth  Night 89 

All's  Well  that  Ends  Well ,  90 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor 92 

Measure  for  Measure 92 

Oymbeline 94 

Titus  Andronicus 96 

Troilus  and  Cressida 97 

Coriolanus 100 

Julius  Caesar 102 

Antony  and  Cleopatra lCjji 

Timon  of  Athens. 107 

Romeo  and  Juliet 110 

Shakspeare's  English  Historical  Plays , 116 


xW  CONTENTS. 

Shakspeare  continued.  rxau 

King  John 118 

Richard  II 119 

Henry  IV.     Part  1 129 

Henry  IV.     Part  II 130 

Henry  V 131 

Henry  VI.     Part  L 132 

Richard  III 133 

Lear 133 

Hamlet ■ 144 

Notes  on  Macbeth 164 

Notes  on  the  Winter's  Tale 114 

Notes  on  Othello 177 

Notes  on  Ben  Jonson 1 85 

Whalley's  Preface 187 

Whalley's  Life  of  Jonson 187 

Every  Man  out  of  His  Humor 188 

Poetaster 188 

Fall  of  Sejanus 189 

Volpone 190 

Epiccene 191 

The  Alchemist 193 

Catiline's  Conspiracy 193 

Bartholomew  Fair 194 

The  Devil  is  an  Ass 196 

The  Staple  of  News , 197 

The  New  Inn 198 

Notes  on  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 199 

Harris's  Commendatory  Poem  on  Fletcher 200 

Life  of  Fletcher  in  Stockdale's  Edition.     1811 201 

Maid's  Tragedy 201 

A  King  and  no  King 203 

The  Scornful  Lady 203 

The  Custom  of  the  Country 204 

The  Elder  Brother 205 

The  Spanish  Curate 206 

"Wit  Without  Money 207 

The  Humorous  Lieutenant 208 

The  Mad  Lover. 208 

The  Loyal  Subject 209 

Rule  a  Wife  and  have  a  Wife 210 

The  Laws  of  Candy 210 

The  Little  French  Lawyer 211 

Valentinian 211 

Rollo 214 

The  Wilderoose  Chase 215 


CONTENTS.  xm 

Beaumont  axo  Fletcher  continued.  PAGE 

A.  Wife  for  a  Month 215 

The  Pilgrim 216 

The  Queen  of  Corinth 216 

The  Noble  Gentleman 217 

The  Coronation 217 

Wit  at  Several  Weapons 218 

The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn 219 

The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen 219 

The  Woman  Hater 220 

Extracts  of  two  Letters  of  Mr.  H.  C.  Robinson,  giving  some  account  of 

two  Lectures  of  Mr.  Coleridge,  delivered  in  May,  1808 220 

Prospectus  of  Lectures  in  1811 227 

Prospectus  of  Lectures 229 

Lecture  I.  General  Character  of  the  Gothic  Mind  in  the  Middle  Ages . .    232 

II.  General  Character  of  the  Gothic  Literature  and  Art 234 

III.  The    Troubadours,    Boccaccio,    Petrarch,    Pulci,    Chaucer, 

Spenser 239 

VII.  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massinger.    Notes 

on  Massinger „ 252 

VIII.  Don  Quixote,  Cervantes 264 

IX.  On  the  Distinctions  of  the  Witty,  the  Droll,  the  Odd,  and 
the  Humorous ;  the  Nature  and  Constituents  of  Humor  ; 

Rabelais,  Swift,  Sterne 275 

X.  Donne,  Dante,  Milton,  Paradise  Lost 286 

XI.  Asiatic  and  Greek  Mythologies,  Robinson  Crusoe,  Use  of 

Works  of  Imagination  in  Education 309 

XII.  Dreams,  Apparitions,  Alchemists,  Personality  of  the  Evil 

Being,  Bodily  Identity 319 

XIII.  On  Poesy  or  Art 328 

XIV.  On  Style 337 

On  the  Prometheus  of  ^Eschylus 344 

Summary  of  an  Essay  on  the  fundamental  position  of  the  Mysteries  in 

Relation  to  Greek  Tragedy 366 

Fragment  of  an  Essay  on  Taste.     1810 368 

Fragment  of  an  Essay  on  Beauty.     1818 370 

Notes  on  Chapman's  Homer.     Extract  of  a  Letter  sent  with  the  Vol- 
ume.    1807 373 

Note  in  Casaubon's  Persius.     1807 376 

Notes  on  Barclay's  Argenis.     1803 376 

l^fotes  on  Chalmers's  Life  of  Samuel  Daniel 378, 

Bishop  Corbet 378 

Notes  on  Selden's  Table  Talk 378 

Notes  on  Tom  Jones 379 

Another  set  of  Notes  on  Tom  Jones 381 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Jonathan  Wild... 382 

Notes  on  Junius.     1801 383 

"Wonderfulness  of  Prose 387 

Notes  on  Herbert's  Temple  and  Harvey's  Synagogue 388 

Extract  of  a  Letter  of  S.  T.  Coleridge  to  W.  Collins,  R.A.,  Printed  in 

the  Life  of  Collins  by  his  Son.     Vol.  i 394 

Notes  on  Mathias'  Edition  of  Gray.     On  a  distant  prospect  of  Eton 

College 394 

Barry  Cornwall 398 

On  the  Mode  of  Studying  Kant.     Extract  from  a  Letter  of  Mr.  Cole- 
ridge to  J.  Gooden,  Esq 399 

Notes  on  the  Pallngenesien  of  Jean  Paul 401 

From  Blackwood's  Edinburgh  Magazine,  Oct.  1821.     Letter  from  Mr. 
Coleridge 402 

Selection  from  Mr.  Coleridge's  Literary  Correspondence  with 
Frilxds,  and  Men  of  Letters: 

Letter  I.  From  a  Professional  Friend 403 

II.  In  Answer  to  the  above 404 

On  the  Philosophic  import  of  the  "Words,  Object  and  Sub- 
ject  408 

III.  To  Mr.  Blackwood 419 

IV.  To  a  Junior  Soph,  at  Cambridge 423 

Substance  of  a  Dialogue,  with  a  Commentary  on  the  same .   425 

Ideal  of  an  Ink-stand 425 

V.  To  the  same 431 

From   Blackwood's   Edinburgh    Magazine,  Jan.   1822.     Historie  and 

Gests  of  Maxilian 436 

Epistle  Premonitory  for  the  Reader  ;  but  contramonitory  and  in  reply 

to  Dick  Proof,  Corrector 438 

Maxilian.     Flight  1 445 

Notes 457 

Notes  to  Lecture  xiii.  on  Poesy  or  Art .  : 482 


LITERARY   REMAINS. 


Extract  from  a  Letter  written  by  Mr.  Coleridge,  in  February^ 
1818,  to  a  gentleman  ivho  attended  the  course  of  Lecturei 
given  in  the  sjwing  of  that  year.  See  the  Canterbury  Mag* 
azine,  September,  1834.— Ed. 

My  next  Friday's  lecture  will,  if  I  do  not  grossly  flatter-blind 
myself,  be  interesting,  and  the  points  of  view  not  only  original, 
but  new  to  the  audience.  I  make  this  distinction,  because  six- 
teen or  rather  seventeen  years  ago,  (a)*  I  delivered  eighteen  lec- 
tures on  Shakspeare  at  the  Royal  Institution  ;  three  fourths  of 
which  appeared  at  that  time  startling  paradoxes,  although  they 
have  since  been  adopted  even  by  men,  who  then  made  use  of 
them  as  proofs  of  my  flighty  and  paradoxical  turn  of  mind  ;  all 
to  prove  that  Shakspeare's  judgment  was,  if  possible,  still  more- 
wonderful  than  his  genius  ;  or  rather  that  the  contradistinction 
itself  between  judgment  and  genius  rested  on  an  utterly  false 
theory.  This,  and  its  proofs  and  grounds  have  been — I  should 
not  have  said  adopted,  but  produced  as  their  own  legitimate  chil- 
dren by  some,  and  by  others  the  merit  of  them  attributed  to  a 
foreign  writer,  whose  lectures  were  not  given  orally  till  two  years 
after  mine,  rather  than  to  their  countryman ;  though  I  dare  ap- 
peal to  the  most  adequate  judges,  as  Sir  George  Beaumont,  the 
Bishop  of  Durham,  Mr.  Sotheby,  and  afterwards  to  Mr.  Rogers 
and  Lord  Byron,  whether  there  is  one  single  principle  in  Schlegel's 
work  (which  is  not  an  admitted  drawback  from  its  merits),  that 
was  not  established  and  applied  in  detail  by  me.     Plutarch  tells 

*  The  letters  refer  to  Notes  at  the  end  of  the  Volume  by  the  present 
editor 


18  LETTER. 

us,  that  egotism  is  a  venial  fault  in  the  unfortunate,  and  justifia- 
ble in  the  calumniated,  &c. 


Extract  from  a  Letter  to  J.  Briton,  Esq. 

28th  Feb.,  1819,  Highgate. 
Dear.  Sir, — First  permit  me  to  remove  a  very  natural,  indeed 
almost  inevitable,  mistake,  relative  to  my  lectures :  namely,  that 
I  have  them,  or  that  the  lectures  of  one  place  or  season  are  in 
any  way  repeated  in  another.  So  tar  from  it,  that  on  any  point 
that  I  had  ever  studied  (and  on  no  other  should  I  dare  discourse 
— I  mean,  that  I  would  not  lecture  on  any  subject  for  which  I 
had  to  acquire  the  main  knowledge,  even  though  a  month's  or 
three  months'  previous  time  were  allowed  me  ;  on  no  subject 
that  had  not  employed  my  thoughts  for  a  large  portion  of  my 
life  since  earliest  manhood,  free  of  all  outward  and  particular 
purpose) — on  any  point  within  my  habit  of  thought,  I  should 
greatly  prefer  a  subject  I  had  never  lectured  on,  to  one  which  I 
had  repeatedly  given  ;  and  those  who  have  attended  me  for  any 
two  seasons  successively  will  bear  witness,  that  the  lecture  given 
at  the  London  Philosophical  Society,  on  the  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
for  instance,  was  as  different  from  that  given  at  the  Crown  and 
Anchor,  as  if  they  had  been  by  two  individuals  who,  without  any 
communication  with  each  other,  had  only  mastered  the  same 
principles  of  philosophic  criticism.  This  was  most  strikingly  evi- 
denced in  the  coincidence  between  my  lectures  and  those  of 
Schlegel ;  such,  and  so  close,  that  it  was  fortunate  for  my  moral 
reputation  that  I  had  not  only  from  five  to  seven  hundred  ear- 
witnesses  that  the  passages  had  been  given  by  me  at  the  Royal 
Institution  two  years  before  Schlegel  commenced  his  lectures  at 
Vienna,  but  that  notes  had  been  taken  of  these  by  several  men 
and  ladies  of  high  rank,  (b)  The  fact  is  this  ;  during  a  course  of 
lectures,  I  faithfully  employ  all  the  intervening  days  in  collecting 
and  digesting  the  materials,  whether  I  have  or  have  not  lectured 
on  the  same  subject  before,  making  no  difference.  The  day  of 
the  lecture,  till  the  hour  of  commencement,  I  devote  to  the  con- 
sideration, what  of  the  mass  before  me  is  best  fitted  to  answer 
the  purposes  of  a  lecture,  that  is,  to  keep  the  audience  awake 
and  interested  during  the  delivery,  and  to  leave  a  sting  behind. 


DEFINITION  OF  POETRY.  19 

that  is,  a  disposition  to  study  the  subject  anew,  under  the  light 
of  a  new  principle.  Several  times,  however,  partly  from  appre- 
hension respecting  my  health  and  animal  spirits,  partly  from  the 
wish  to  possess  copies  that  might  afterwards  be  marketable  among 
the  publishers,  I  have  previously  written  the  lecture  ;  but  before 
I  had  proceeded  twenty  minutes,  I  have  been  obliged  to  push  the 
MS.  away,  and  give  the  subject  a  new  turn.  Nay,  this  was  =o 
notorious,  that  many  of  my  auditors  used  to  threaten  me,  when 
they  saw  any  number  of  written  papers  upon  my  desk,  to  steal 
them  away ;  declaring  they  never  felt  so  secure  of  a  good  lecture 
as  when  they  perceived  that  I  had  not  a  single  scrap  of  writing 
before  me.  I  take  far,  far  more  pains  than  would  go  to  the  set 
composition  of  a  lecture,  both  by  varied  reading  and  by  medita- 
tion ;  but  for  the  words,  illustrations,  &c,  I  know  almost  as  little 
as  any  one  of  the  audience  (that  is,  those  of  any  thing  like  the 
same  education  with  myself)  what  they  will  be  five  minutes  be- 
fore the  lecture  begins.  Such  is  my  way,  for  such  is  my  nature  ; 
and  in  attempting  any  other,  I  should  only  torment  myself  in  or- 
der to  disappoint  my  auditors — torment  myself  during  the  deliv- 
ery, I  mean ;  for  in  all  other  respects  it  would  be  a  much  shorter 
and  easier  task  to  deliver  them  from  writing.  I  am  anxious  to 
preclude  any  semblance  of  affectation  ;  and  have  therefore  trou- 
bled you  with  this  lengthy  preface  before  I  have  the  hardihood  to 
assure  you,  that  you  might  as  well  ask  me  what  my  dreams 
were  in  the  year  1814,  as  what  my  course  of  lectures  was  at  the 
Surrey  Institution.     Fu'mius  Troes. 


SHAKSPEARE, 

"WITH   INTRODUCTORY   MATTER   ON   POETRY,   THE   DRAMA,    AND   THE   STAGE. 
DEFINITION    OF    POETRY. 

Poetry  is  not  the  proper  antithesis  to  prose,  but  to  science 
Poetry  is  opposed  to  science,  and  prose  to  metre.  The  proper 
and  immediate  object  of  science  is  the  acquirement,  or  commu- 
nication, of  truth  ;  the  proper  and  immediate  object  of  poetry  is 
the  communication  of  immediate  pleasure.  This  definition  isi 
useful :  but  as  it  would  include  novels  and  other  works  of  fie- 


20  DEFINITION  OF  POETRY. 

tion,  which  yet  we  do  not  call  poems,  there  must  be  some  addi* 
tional  character  by  which  poetry  is  not  only  divided  from  oppo* 
sites,  but  likeAvise  distinguished  from  disparate,  though  similar, 
modes  of  composition.  Now  how  is  this  to  be  effected  ?  In 
animated  prose,  the  beauties  of  nature,  and  the  passions  and  ac- 
cidents of  human  nature,  are  often  expressed  in  that  natural 
language  which  the  contemplation  of  them  would  suggest  to  a 
pure  and  benevolent  mind  ;  yet  still  neither  we  nor  the  writers 
call  such  a  work  a  poem,  though  no  work  could  deserve  that 
name  which  did  not  include  all  this,  together  with  something 
else.  "What  is  this  ?  It  is  that  pleasurable  emotion,  that  pecu- 
liar state  and  degree  of  excitement,  which  arises  in  the  poet 
himself  in  the  act  of  composition  ; — and  in  order  to  understand 
this,  we  must  combine  a  more  than  ordinary  sympathy  with  the 
objects,  emotions,  or  incidents  contemplated  by  the  poet,  conse- 
quent on  a  more  than  common  sensibility,  with  a  more  than  or- 
dinary activity  of  the  mind  in  respect  of  the  fancy  and  the  ima- 
gination. Hence  is  produced  a  more  vivid  reflection  of  the 
truths  of  nature  and  of  the  human  heart,  united  with  a  constant 
activity  modifying  and  correcting  these  truths  by  that  sort  of 
pleasurable  emotion,  which  the  exertion  of  all  our  faculties  gives 
in  a  certain  degree  ;  but  which  can  only  be  felt  in  perfection 
under  the  full  play  of  those  powers  of  mind,  which  are  sponta- 
neous rather  than  voluntary,  and  in  which  the  effort  required 
bears  no  proportion  to  the  activity  enjoyed.  This  is  the  state 
which  permits  the  production  of  a  highly  pleasurable  whole,  of 
which  each  part  shall  also  communicate  for  itself  a  distinct  and 
conscious  pleasure  ;  and  hence  arises  the  definition,  which  I  trust 
is  now  intelligible,  that  poetry,  or  rather  a  poem,  is  a  species  of 
composition,  opposed  to  science,  as  having  intellectual  pleasure 
for  its  object,  and  as  attaining  its  end  by  the  use  of  language 
natural  to  us  in  a  state  of  excitement, — but  distinguished  from 
other  species  of  composition,  not  excluded  by  the  former  criterion, 
by  permitting  a  pleasure  from  the  whole  consistent  with  a  con- 
sciousness of  pleasure  from  the  component  parts  ; — and  the  per- 
fection of  which  is,  to  communicate  from  each  part  the  greatest 
immediate  pleasure  compatible  with  the  largest  sum  of  pleasure 
on  the  whole.  This,  of  course,  will  vary  with  the  different  modes 
of  poetry  ; — and  that  splendor  of  particular  lines,  which  would  be 
worthy  of  admiration  in  an  impassioned  elegy,  or  a  short  ind*"" 


DEFINITION  OF  POETEY.  21 

nant  satire,  would  bo  a  blemish  and  proof  of  vile  taste  in  a  tragedy 
or  an  epic  poem. 

It  is  remarkable,  by  the  way,  that  Milton  in  three  incidental 
words  has  implied  all  which  for  the  purposes  of  more  distinct  ap- 
prehension, which  at  first  must  be  slow-paced  in  order  to  be  dis- 
tinct, I  have  endeavored  to  develop  in  a  precise  and  strictly  ade- 
quate definition.  Speaking-  of  poetry,  he  says,  as  in  a  parenthesis, 
"  which  is  simple,  sensuous,  passionate."  How  awful  is  the 
power  of  words  ! — -fearful  often  in  their  consequences  when  merely 
felt,  not  understood  ;  but  most  awful  when  both  felt  and  under- 
stood ! — Had  these  three  words  only  been  properly  understood  by, 
and  present  in  the  minds  of,  general  readers,  not  only  almost  a 
library  of  false  poetry  would  have  been  either  precluded  or  still- 
born, but,  what  is  of  more  consequence,  works  truly  excellent  and 
capable  of  enlarging  the  understanding,  warming  and  purifying 
the  heart,  and  placing  in  the  centre  of  the  whole  being  the 
germs  of  noble  and  manlike  actions,  would  have  been  the  com- 
mon diet  of  the  intellect  instead.  For  the  first  condition,  sim- 
plicity,— while,  on  the  one  hand,  it  distinguishes  poetry  from  the 
arduous  processes  of  science,  laboring  towards  an  end  not  yet 
arrived  at,  and  supposes  a  smooth  and  finished  road,  on  which 
the  reader  is  to  walk  onward  easily,  with  streams  murmuring 
by  his  side,  and  trees  and  flowers  and  human  dwellings  to  make 
his  journey  as  delightful  as  the  object  of  it  is  desirable,  instead 
of  having  to  toil  with  the  pioneers,  and  painfully  make  the  road 
on  which  others  are  to  travel, — precludes,  on  the  other  hand, 
every  affectation  and  morbid  peculiarity  ; — the  second  condition, 
sensuousness,  insures  that  framework  of  objectivity,  that  definite- 
ness  and  articulation  of  imagery,  and  that  modification  of  the 
images  themselves,  without  which  poetry  becomes  flattened  into 
mere  didactics  of  practice,  or  evaporated  into  a  hazy,  unthought- 
ful  day-dreaming  ;  and  the  third  condition,  passion,  provides  that 
neither  thought  nor  imagery  shall  be  simply  objective,  but  that 
the  passio  vera  of  humanity  shall  warm  and  animate  both. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  previous  definition,  this  most  gen- 
eral and  distinctive  character  of  a  poem  originates  in  the  poetic 
genius  itself ;  and  though  it  comprises  whatever  can  with  any 
propriety  be  called  a  poem  (unless  that  word  be  a  mere  lazy 
synonyme  for  a  composition  in  metre),  it  yet  becomes  a  just, 
and  not  merely  discriminative,  but  full  and  adequate,  definition 


22  GREEK   DRAMA. 

of  poetiy  in  its  highest  and  most  peculiar  sense,  only  so  far  as  the 
distinction  still  results  from  the  poetic  genius,  which  sustains  and 
modifies  the  emotions,  thoughts,  and  vivid  representations  of  the 
poem  by  the  energy  without  effort  of  the  poet's  own  mind, — by  the 
spontaneous  activity  of  his  imagination  and  fancy,  and  by  whatever 
eke  with  these  reveals  itself  in  the  balancing  and  reconciling  of 
opposite  or  discordant  qualities,  sameness  with  difference,  a  sense 
of  novelty  and  freshness  with  old  or  customary  objects,  a  more 
than  usual  state  of  emotion  with  more  than  usual  order,  self-pos- 
session and  judgment  with  enthusiasm  and  vehement  feeling, — 
and  which,  while  it  blends  and  harmonizes  the  natural  and  the 
artificial,  still  subordinates  art  to  nature,  the  manner  to  the 
matter,  and  our  admiration  of  the  poet  to  our  sympathy  with  the 
images,  passions,  characters,  and  incidents  of  the  poem  : — 

Doubtless,  this  could  not  be,  but  that  she  turns 
Bodies  to  spirit  by  sublimation  strange, 
As  fire  converts  to  fire  the  things  it  burns — 
As  we  our  food  into  our  nature  change  ! 

From  their  gross  matter  she  abstracts  their  forms, 
And  draws  a  kind  of  quintessence  from  things. 
Which  to  her  proper  nature  she  transforms 
To  bear  them  light  on  her  celestial  wings  I 

Thus  doth  she,  when  from  individual  states 
She  doth  abstract  the  universal  kinds, 
Which  then  reclothed  in  divers  names  and  fates 
Steal  access  thro'  our  senses  to  our  minds* 


GREEK  DRAMA,  (c)  f 

It  is  truly  singular  that  Plato, — whose  philosophy  and  religion 
were  but  exotic  at  home,  and  a  mere  opposition  to  the  finite  in 

*  Sir  John  Davies  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  sect.  iv.  The  words 
and  lines  in  italics  are  substituted  to  apply  these  verses  to  the  poetic  ge- 
nius. The  greater  part  of  this  latter  paragraph  may  be  found  adopted, 
with  some  alterations,  in  the  Biographia  Literaria,  III.  p.  314;  but  I  have 
thought  it  better  in  this  instance  and  some  others,  to  run  the  chance 
of  bringing  a  few  passages  twice  over  to  the  recollection  of  the  reader, 
than  to  weaken  the  force  of  the  original  argument  by  breaking  the  connec- 
tion.— Ed. 

f  The  Notes  to  this  Essay,  to  which  the  numbers  refer,  are  placed  at  tlw 
end  of  the  volume. 


GKEEK   DRAMA.  23 

all  things,  genuine  prophet  and  anticipator  as  he  was  of  tne 
Protestant  Christian  sera, — should  have  given  in  his  Dialogue  of 
the  Banquet,  a  justification  of  our  Shakspeare.  (1)  For  he  re- 
lates that,  when  all  the  other  guests  had  either  dispersed  or  fallen 
asleep,  Socrates  only,  together  with  Aristophanes  and  Agathon, 
remained  awake,  and  that,  while  he  continued  to  drink  with 
them  out  of  a  large  goblet,  he  compelled  them,  though  most  re- 
luctantly, to  admit  that  it  was  the  business  of  one  and  the  same 
genius  to  excel  in  tragic  and  comic  poetry,  or  that  the  tragic  poet 
ought,  at  the  same  time,  to  contain  within  himself  the  powers  of 
comedy. *=  Now,  as  this  was  directly  repugnant  to  the  entire 
theory  of  the  ancient  critics,  and  contrary  to  all  their  experience, 
it  is  evident  that  Plato  must  have  fixed  the  eye  of  his  contempla 
tion  on  the  innermost  essentials  of  the  drama,  abstracted  from 
the  forms  of  age  or  country.  In  another  passage  he  even  adds 
the  reason,  namely,  that  opposites  illustrate  each  other's  nature, 
and  in  their  struggle  draw  forth  the  strength  of  the  combatants, 
and  display  the  conqueror  as  sovereign  even  on  the  territories  of 
the  rival  power. 

Nothing  can  more  forcibly  exemplify  the  separative  spirit  of  the 
Greek  arts  than  their  comedy  as  opposed  to  their  tragedy.  But 
as  the  immediate  struggle  of  contraries  supposes  an  arena  com- 
mon to  both,  so  both  wrere  alike  ideal ;  that  is,  the  comedy  of 
Aristophanes  rose  to  as  great  a  distance  above  the  ludicrous  of 
real  life,  as  the  tragedy  of  Sophocles  above  its  tragic  events  and 
passions,  (2) — and  it  is  in  this  one  point,  of  absolute  ideality,  that 
the  comedy  of  Shakspeare  and  the  old  comedy  of  Athens  coincide. 
In  this  also  alone  did  the  Greek  tragedy  and  comedy  unite  ;  in 
every  thing  else  they  were  exactly  opposed  to  each  other.  (3) 
Tragedy  is  poetry  in  its  deepest  earnest ;  comedy  is  poetry  in  un- 
limited jest.  Earnestness  consists  in  the  direction  and  conver 
gence  of  all  the  powers  of  the  soul  to  one  aim,  and  in  the  volun- 

*  t^eypofievog  dtt  ISelv  rovg  fxlv  uA?,ovg  ttadevdovrag  nal  olxojuevovg, 

Aydduva  d£  nal  'ApioTCKpdvrjv  nal  HonpuTrj  etl  jibvovg  lyprjyopevai,  nal  ntvELv 
ck  (pia?„r]g  fieydlrjg  imde^td.  rbv  ovv  ^LunpuTr)  avrolg  dtaMyeodau-  nal  rd  [iH 
aXka  6  'Apiar6Sr]/Lcog  ovrc  e<j>7]  jUEjuvjjodai  rbv  loyov  (ovre  yap  eg  dpxns  izapa- 
ytveodai,  vnovvGrd^Eiv  re)  rd  fievroi  KscpdXaiov  i(j)7],  Trpooavaynd&Lv  rbv  2a>- 
Kpdrrj  ojuoXoyelv  avrovg  rov  avrov  dvdpbg  eivat  Ko/iudiav  nal  rpaywdiav  krcia- 
raaBai  noulv,  ical  rbv  rexvV  roaycpdoTtoLov  bvra,  nal  K-dfiGihizoLbv  elvat. 

Symp.  sub  fine. 


24  GREEK   DRAMA. 

tary  restraint  of  its  activity  in  consequence  ;  the  opposite,  there- 
fore, lies  in  the  apparent  abandonment  of  all  definite  aim  or  end, 
and  in  the  removal  of  all  bounds  in  the  exercise  of  the  mind, — 
attaining  its  real  end,  as  an  entire  contrast,  most  perfectly,  the 
greater  the  display  is  of  intellectual  wealth  squandered  in  the 
wantonness  of  sport  without  an  object,  and  the  more  abundant 
the  life  and  vivacity  in  the  creations  of  the  arbitrary  will. 

The  later  comedy,  even  where  it  was  really  comic,  was  doubt- 
less likewise  more  comic,  the  more  free  it  appeared  from  any  fixed 
aim.  Misunderstandings  of  intention,  fruitless  struggles  of  absurd 
passion,  contradictions  of  temper,  and  laughable  situations  there 
were  ;  but  still  the  form  of  the  representation  itself  was  serious  ; 
it  proceeded  as  much  according  to  settled  laws,  and  used  as  much 
the  same  means  of  art,  though  to  a  different  purpose,  as  the 
regular  tragedy  itself.  But  in  the  old  comedy  the  very  form  it- 
self is  whimsical ;  the  whole  work  is  one  great  jest,  comprehend- 
ing a  world  of  jests  within  it,  among  which  each  maintains  its 
own  place  without  seeming  to  concern  itself  as  to  the  relation  in 
which  it  may  stand  to  its  fellows.  In  short,  in  Sophocles,  the 
constitution  of  tragedy  is  monarchical,  but  such  as  it  existed  in 
elder  Greece,  limited  by  laws,  and  therefore  the  more  venerable, — 
all  the  parts  adapting  and  submitting  themselves  to  the  majesty 
of  the  heroic  sceptre  : — in  Aristophanes,  comedy,  on  the  contrary, 
is  poetry  in  its  most  democratic  form,  and  it  is  a  fundamental 
principle  with  it,  rather  to  risk  all  the  confusion  of  anarchy,  than 
to  destroy  the  independence  and  privileges  of  its  individual  con- 
stituents,— place,  verse,  characters,  even  single  thoughts,  con- 
ceits, and  allusions,  each  turning  on  the  pivot  of  its  own  free 
will. 

The  tragic  poet  idealizes  his  characters  by  giving  to  the  spir- 
itual part  of  our  nature  a  more  decided  preponderance  over  the 
animal  cravings  and  impulses,  than  is  met  with  in  real  life :  the 
comic  poet  idealizes  his  characters  by  making  the  animal  the 
governing  power,  and  the  intellectual  the  mere  instrument.  But 
as  tragedy  is  not  a  collection  of  virtues  and  perfections,  but  takes 
care  only  that  the  vices  and  imperfections  shall  spring  from  the 
passions,  errors,  and  prejudices  which  arise  out  of  the  soul ; — so 
neither  is  comedy  a  mere  crowd  of  vices  and  follies,  but  whatever 
qualities  it  represents,  even  though  they  are  in  a  certain  sense 
amiable,  it  still  displays  them  as  having  their  origin  in  some  de- 


GREEK  DRAMA.  25 

pendence  on  our  lower  nature,  accompanied  with  a  defect  in  true 
freedom  of  spirit  and  self-subsistence,  and  subject  to  that  uncon- 
nection  by  contradictions  of  the  inward  being,  to  which  all  folly 
is  owing. 

The  ideal  of  earnest  poetry  consists  in  the  union  and  harmoni- 
ous melting  down,  and  fusion  of  the  sensual  into  the  spiritual, — 
of  man  as  an  animal  into  man  as  a  power  of  reason  and  self- 
government.  And  this  we  have  represented  to  us  most  clearly 
in  the  plastic  art,  or  statuary  ;  where  the  perfection  of  outward 
form  is  a  symbol  of  the  perfection  of  an  inward  idea  ;  where  the 
body  is  wholly  penetrated  by  the  soul,  and  spiritualized  even  to  a 
state  of  glory,  and  like  a  transparent  substance,  the  matter,  in 
its  own  nature  darkness,  becomes  altogether  a  vehicle  and  fixure 
of  light,  a  mean  of  developing  its  beauties,  and  unfolding  its 
wealth  of  various  colors  without  disturbing  its  unity,  or  causing 
a  division  of  the  parts.  The  sportive  ideal,  on  the  contrary,  con- 
sists in  the  perfect  harmony  and  concord  of  the  higher  nature, 
with  the  animal,  as  with  its  ruling  principle  and  its  acknowl- 
edged regent.  The  understanding  and  practical  reason  are  rep- 
resented as  the  willing  slaves  of  the  senses  and  appetites,  and 
of  the  passions  arising  out  of  them.  Hence  we  may  admit  the  ■ 
appropriateness  to  the  old  comedy,  as  a  work  of  defined  art,  of 
allusions  and  descriptions,  which  morality  can  never  justify,  and, 
only  with  reference  to  the  author  himself,  and  only  as  being  the 
effect  or  rather  the  cause  of  the  circumstances  in  which  he  wrote, 
can  consent  even  to  palliate.  (4) 

The  old  comedy  rose  to  its  perfection  in  Aristophanes,  and  in 
him  also  it  died  with  the  freedom  of  Greece.  Then  arose  a 
species  of  drama,  more  fitly  called,  dramatic  entertainment  than 
comedy,  but  of  which,  nevertheless,  our  modern  comedy  (Shak- 
speare's  altogether  excepted)  is  the  genuine  descendant.  Euri- 
pides had  already  brought  tragedy  lower  down  and  by  many 
steps  nearer  to  the  real  world  than  his  predecessors  had  ever 
done,  and  the  passionate  admiration  which  Menander  and  Phile- 
mon expressed  for  him,  and  their  open  avowals  that  he  was  their 
great  master,  entitle  us  to  consider  their  dramas  as  of  a  middle 
species,  between  tragedy  and  comedy, — not  the  tragi-comedy,  or 
thing  of  heterogeneous  parts,  but  a  complete  whole,  founded  on 
principles  of  its  own.  Throughout  we  find  the  drama  of  Menan- 
der distinguishing  itself  from  tragedy,  but  not,  as  the  genuine  old 

vol.  iv.  B 


2G  GREEK    DRAMA. 

comedy,  contrasting  with,  and  opposing  it.  Tragedy,  indeed, 
carried  the  thoughts  into  the  mythologic  world,  in  order  to  raise 
the  emotions,  the  fears,  and  the  hopes,  which  convince  the  in- 
most heart  that  their  final  cause  is  not  to  be  discovered  in  the 
limits  of  mere  mortal  life,  and  force  us  into  a  presentiment,  how- 
ever dim,  of  a  state  in  which  those  struggles  of  inward  free  will 
with  outward  necessity,  which  form  the  true  subject  of  the  trage- 
dian, shall  be  reconciled  and  solved  ; — the  entertainment  or  new 
comedy,  on  the  other  hand,  remained  within  the  circle  of  experi- 
ence. Instead  of  the  tragic  destiny,  it  introduced  the  power  of 
chance  ;  even  in  the  few  fragments  of  Menander  and  Philemon 
now  remaining  to  us,  we  find  many  exclamations  and  reflections 
concerning  chance  and  fortune,  as  in  the  tragic  poets  concerning 
destiny.  In  tragedy,  the  moral  law,  either  as  obeyed  or  violated, 
above  all  consequences — its  own  maintenance  or  violation  consti- 
tuting the  most  important  of  all  consequences — forms  the  ground  ; 
the  new  comedy,  and  our  modern  comedy  in  general  (Shakspeare 
excepted  as  before),  lies  in  prudence  or  imprudence,  enlightened 
or  misled  self-love.  The  whole  moral  system  of  the  entertain- 
ment exactly  like  that  of  fable,  consists  in  rules  of  prudence,  with 
an  exquisite  conciseness,  and  at  the  same  time  an  exhaustive  ful- 
ness of  sense.  An  old  critic  said  that  tragedy  Avas  the  flight  or 
elevation  of  life,  comedy  (that  of  Menander)  its  arrangement  or 
ordonnance.  (5) 

Add  to  these  features  a  portrait-like  truth  of  character, — not 
so  far  indeed  as  that  a  bona  fide  individual  should  be  described 
or  imagined,  but  yet  so  that  the  features  which  give  interest  and 
permanence  to  the  class  should  be  individualized.  The  old  tra- 
gedy moved  in  an  ideal  world, — the  old  comedy  in  a  fantastic 
world.  As  the  entertainment,  or  new  comedy,  restrained  the 
creative  activity  both  of  the  fancy  and  the  imagination,  it  in- 
demnified the  understanding  in  appealing  to  the  judgment,  for  the 
probability  of  the  scenes  represented.  The  ancients  themselves 
acknowledged  the  new  comedy  as  an  exact  copy  of  real  life. 
The  grammarian,  Aristophanes,  somewhat  affectedly  exclaimed  : 
"0  Life  and  Menander,  which  of  you  two  imitated  the  other  ?" 
In  short,  the  form  of  this  species  of  drama  was  poetry,  the  ituff 
or  matter  was  prose.  It  was  prose  rendered  delightful  by  the 
blandishments  and  measured  motions  of  the  muse.  Yet  even  this 
was  not  universal.    The  mimes  of  Sophron,  so  passionately  admired 


GREEK  DRAMA.  27 

by  Plato,  were  written  in  prose,  and  were  scenes  out  of  real  life 
conducted  in  dialogue.  The  exquisite  Feast  of  Adonis  (Zvquxoikjioci 
9i  'Adwvi&'rovaui)  in  Theocritus,  we  are  told,  with  some  others  of 
his  eclogues,  were  close  imitations  of  certain  mimes  of  Sophron — 
free  translations  of  the  prose  into  hexameters.  (6) 

It  will  not  be  improper,  in  this  place,  to  make  a  few  remarks 
on  the  remarkable  character  and  functions  of  the  chorus  in  the 
Greek  tragic  drama. 

The  chorus  entered  from  below,  close  by  the  orchestra,  and 
there,  pacing  to  and  fro  during  the  choral  odes,  performed  their 
solemn  measured  dance.  In  the  centre  of  the  orchestra,  directly 
over  against  the  middle  of  the  scene,  there  stood  an  elevation 
with  steps  in  the  shape  of  a  large  altar,  as  high  as  the  boards  of 
the  logeion  or  movable  stage.  This  elevation  was  named  the 
thymele  (dviAilrj),  and  served  to  recall  the  origin  and  original 
purpose  of  the  chorus,  as  an  altar-song  in  honor  of  the  presiding 
deity.  Here,  and  on  these  steps,  the  persons  of  the  chorus  sate 
collectively,  when  they  were  not  singing  ;  attending  to  the  dia- 
logue as  spectators,  and  acting  as  (what  in  truth  they  were)  the 
ideal  representatives  of  the  real  audience,  and  of  the  poet  him- 
self in  his  own  character,  assuming  the  supposed  impressions 
made  by  the  drama,  in  order  to  direct  and  rule  them.  But 
when  the  chorus  itself  formed  part  of  the  dialogue,  then  the 
leader  of  the  band,  the  foreman  or  coryphceus,  ascended,  as 
some  think,  the  level  summit  of  the  thymele,  in  order  to  com- 
mand the  stage,  or,  perhaps,  the  whole  chorus  advanced  to  the 
front  of  the  orchestra,  and  thus  put  themselves  in  ideal  connec- 
tion, as  it  were,  with  the  dramatis  personce  there  acting.  This 
thymele  was  in  the  centre  of  the  whole  edifice,  all  the  measure- 
ments were  calculated,  and  the  semicircle  of  the  amphitheatre 
was  drawn,  from  this  point.  It  had  a  double  use,  a  two-fold 
purpose  ;  it  constantly  reminded  the  spectators  of  the  origin  of 
tragedy  as  a  religious  service,  and  declared  itself  as  the  ideal 
representative  of  the  audience  by  having  its  place  exactly  in  the 
point,  to  which  all  the  radii  from  the  different  seats  or  benches 
converged.  (7) 

In  this  double  character,  as  constituent  parts,  and  yet  at  the 
same  time  as  spectators,  of  the  drama,  the  chorus  could  not  but 
tend  to  enforce  the  unity  of  place  ; — not  on  the  score  of  any  sup- 
posed improbability,  which  the  understanding  or  common  sense 


28  GREEK  DRAMA. 

might  detect  in  a  change  of  place  ; — but  because  the  s>v)r.ses  them 
selves  put  it  out  of  the  power  of  any  imagination  to  conceive  a 
place  coming  to  and  going  away  from  the  persons,  instead  of  the 
persons  changing  their  place.  Yet  there  are  instances  in  which, 
during  the  silence  of  the  chorus,  the  poets  have  hazarded  this  by 
a  change  in  that  part  of  the  scenery  which  represented  the  more 
distant  objects  to  the  eye  of  the  spectator — a  demonstrative  proof, 
that  this  alternately  extolled  and  ridiculed  unity  (as  ignorantly 
ridiculed  as  extolled)  was  grounded  on  no  essential  principle  of 
reason,  but  arose  out  of  circumstances  which  the  poet  could  not 
remove,  and  therefore  took  up  into  the  form  of  the  drama,  and 
co-organized  it  with  all  the  other  parts  into  a  living  whole.  (8) 

The  Greek  tragedy  may  rather  be  compared  to  our  serious 
opera  than  to  the  tragedies  of  Shakspeare  ;  nevertheless,  the 
difference  is  far  greater  than  the  likeness.  In  the  opera  all  is 
subordinated  to  the  music,  the  dresses  and  the  scenery  ; — the 
poetry  is  a  mere  vehicle  for  articulation,  and  as  little  pleasure  is 
lost  by  ignorance  of  the  Italian  language,  so  is  little  gained  by 
the  knowledge  of  it.  But  in  the  Greek  drama  all  was  but  as  in- 
struments and  accessories  to  the  poetry  ;  and  hence  we  should 
form  a  better  notion  of  the  choral  music  from  the  solemn  hymns 
and  psalms  of  austere  church  music  than  from  any  species  of 
theatrical  singing.  A  single  flute  or  pipe  was  the  ordinary  ac- 
companiment ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  supposed,  that  any  display  of 
musical  power  was  allowed  to  obscure  the  distinct  hearing  of  the 
words.  On  the  contrary,  the  evident  purpose  was  to  render  the 
words  more  audible,  and  to  secure  by  the  elevations  and  pauses 
greater  facility  of  understanding  the  poetry.  For  the  choral 
songs  are,  and  ever  must  have  been,  the  most  difficult  part  of 
the  tragedy  ;  there  occur  in  them  the  most  involved  verbal  com- 
pounds, the  newest  expressions,  the  boldest  images,  the  most  rec- 
ondite allusions.  Is  it  credible  that  the  poets  would,  one  and 
all,  have  been  thus  prodigal  of  the  stores  of  art  and  genius,  if 
they  had  known  that  in  the  representation  the  whole  must  have 
been  lost  to  the  audience, — at  a  time  too  when  the  means  of 
after-publication  were  so  difficult  and  expensive,  and  the  copies 
of  their  works  so  slowly  and  narrowly  circulated  ?   (9) 

The  masks  also  must  be  considered — their  vast  variety  and 
admirable  workmanship.  Of  this  we  retain  proof  by  the  marble 
masks  which  represented  them  ;  but  tc  this  in  the  real  mask  we 


PROGRESS   OF   THE   DRAMA.  29 

must  add  the  thinness  of  the  substance  and  the  exquisite  fitting 
on  to  the  head  of  the  actor ;  so  that  not  only  were  the  very  eyes 
painted  with  a  single  opening  left  for  the  pupil  of  the  actor's 
eye,  but  in  some  instances,  even  the  iris  itself  was  painted,  when 
the  color  was  a  known  characteristic  of  the  divine  or  heroic  per- 
sonage represented.  (10) 

Finally,  I  will  note  down  those  fundamental  characteristics 
which  contra-distinguish  the  ancient  literature  from  the  modern 
generally,  but  which  more  especially  appear  in  prominence  in 
the  tragic  drama.  The  ancient  was  allied  to  statuary,  the  mod- 
ern refers  to  painting.  In  the  first  there  is  a  predominance  of 
rhythm  and  melody,  in  the  second  of  harmony  and  counterpoint. 
The  Greeks  idolized  the  finite,  and  therefore  were  the  masters  of 
all  grace,  elegance,  proportion,  fancy,  dignity,  majesty — of  what- 
2ver,  in  short,  is  capable  of  being  definitely  conveyed  by  defined 
forms  or  thoughts  :  the  moderns  revere  the  infinite,  and  affect  the 
indefinite  as  a  vehicle  of  the  infinite ; — hence  their  passions,  their 
obscure  hopes  and  fears,  their  wandering  through  the  unknown, 
their  grander  moral  feelings,  their  more  august  conception  of  man 
as  man,  their  future  rather  than  their  past — in  a  word,  their  sub- 
limity. (11) 

PROGRESS  OF  THE  DRAMA. 

Let  two  persons  join  in  the  same  scheme  to  ridicule  a  third, 
and  either  take  advantage  of,  or  invent,  some  story  for  that  pur- 
pose, and  mimicry  will  have  already  produced  a  sort  of  rude 
comedy.  It  becomes  an  inviting  treat  to  the  populace,  and 
gains  an  additional  zest  and  burlesque  by  following  the  already 
established  plan  of  tragedy ;  and  the  first  man  of  genius  who 
seizes  the  idea,  and  reduces  it  into  form, — into  a  work  of  art, — 
by  metre  and  music,  is  the  Aristophanes  of  the  country. 

How  just  this  account  is  will  appear  from  the  fact  that  in  the 
first  or  old  comedy  of  the  Athenians,  most  of  the  dramatis  per- 
sons were  living  characters  introduced  under  their  own  names ; 
and  no  doubt,  their  ordinary  dress,  manner,  person  and  voice 
were  closely  mimicked.  In  less  favorable  states  of  society,  as 
that  of  England  in  the  middle  ages,  the  beginnings  of  comedy 
would  be  constantly  taking  place  from  the  mimics  and  satirical 
minstrels :   but  from  want  of  fixed  abode,  popular  government, 


30  PROGRESS  OF  THE   DRAMA. 

and  the  succjisive  attendance  of  the  same  auditors,  it  would  still 
remain  in  embryo.  I  shall,  perhaps,  have  occasion  to  observe 
that  this  remark  is  not  without  importance  in  explaining  the  es- 
sential differences  of  the  modern  and  ancient  theatres. 

Phenomena,  similar  to  those  which  accompanied  the  origin  of 
tragedy  and  comedy  among  the  Greeks,  would  take  place  among 
the  Romans  much  more  slowly,  and  the  drama  would,  in  any 
case,  have  much  longer  remained  in  its  first  irregular  form  from 
the  character  of  the  people,  their  continual  engagements  in  wars 
of  conquest,  the  nature  of  their  government,  and  their  rapidly 
increasing  empire.  But,  however  this  might  have  been,  the 
conquest  of  Greece  precluded  both  the  process  and  the  necessity 
of  it ;  and  the  Roman  stage  at  once  presented  imitations  or  trans- 
lations of  the  Greek  drama.  This  continued  till  the  perfect  es- 
tablishment of  Christianity.  Some  attempts,  indeed,  were  made 
to  adapt  the  persons  of  Scriptural  or  ecclesiastical  history  to  the 
drama  ;  and  sacred  plays,  it  is  probable,  were  not  unknown  in 
Constantinople  under  the  emperors  of  the  East.  The  first  of  the 
kind  is,  I  believe,  the  only  one  preserved, — namely,  the  Xgtaiog 
Iluo/hiv,  or  "  Christ  in  his  sufferings,"  by  Gregory  ]N"azianzen, — 
possibly  written  in  consequence  of  the  prohibition  of  profane  liter- 
ature to  the  Christians  by  the  apostate  Julian.*  In  the  "West, 
however,  the  enslaved  and  debauched  Roman  world  became  too 
barbarous  for  any  theatrical  exhibitions  more  refined  than  those 
of  pageants  and  chariot-races  ;  while  the  spirit  of  Christianity, 
which  in  its  most  corrupt  form  still  breathed  general  humanity, 
whenever  controversies  of  faith  were  not  concerned,  had  done 
away  the  cruel  combats  of  the  gladiators,  and  the  loss  of  the  dis- 
tant provinces  prevented  the  possibility  of  exhibiting  the  engage- 
ments of  wild  beasts. 

I  pass,  therefore,  at  once  to  the  feudal  ages  which  soon  suc- 
ceeded, confining  my  observation  to  this  country  ;  though,  indeed, 
the  same  remark  with  very  few  alterations  will  apply  to  all  the 
other  states,  into  which  the  great  empire  was  broken.  Ages  of 
darkness  succeeded ; — not,  indeed,  the  darkness  of  Russia  or  of 
the  barbarous  lands  unconquered  by  Rome  ;  for  from  the  time  of 
Honorius  to  the  destruction  of  Constantinople  and  the  consequent 
introduction  of  ancient  literature  into  Europe,  there  was  a  contin- 

*  A.D.  363.  But  I  believe  the  prevailing  opinion  amongst  scholars  now 
is,  that  the  Xpiorbg  Tluax^v  is  not  genuine. — Ed. 


PROGRESS   OF   THE   DRAMA.  31 

ued  succession  of  individual  intellects ; — the  golden  chain  was  never 
wholly  broken,  though  the  connecting  links  were  often  of  baser 
metal.  A  dark  cloud,  like  another  sky,  covered  the  entire  cope 
of  heaven, — but  in  this  place  it  thinned  away,  and  white  stains 
of  light  showed  a  half-eclipsed  star  behind  it, — in  that  place  it 
was  rent  asunder,  and  a  star  passed  across  the  opening  in  all 
its  brightness,  and  then  vanished.  Such  stars  exhibited  them- 
selves only ;  surrounding  objects  did  not  partake  of  their  light. 
There  were  deep  wells  of  knowledge,  but  no  fertilizing  rills  and 
rivulets.  For  the  drama,  society  was  altogether  a  state  of  chaos, 
out  of  which  it  was,  for  a  while  at  least,  to  proceed  anew,  as  if 
there  had  been  none  before  it.  And  yet  it  is  not  undelightful  to 
contemplate  the  eduction  of  good  from  evil.  The  ignorance  of 
the  great  mass  of  our  countrymen  was  the  efficient  cause  of  the 
reproduction  of  the  drama  ;  and  the  preceding  darkness  and  the 
returning  light  were  alike  necessary  in  order  to  the  creation  of  a 
Shakspeare.  + 

The  drama  recommenced  in  England,  as  it  first  began  in 
Greece,  in  religion.  The  people  were  not  able  to  read, — the 
priesthood  were  unwilling  that  they  should  read  ;  and  yet  their 
own  interest  compelled  them  not  to  leave  the  people  wholly  ig- 
norant of  the  great  events  of  sacred  history.  They  did  that, 
therefore,  by  scenic  representations,  which  in  after-ages  it  has 
been  attempted  to  do  in  Roman  Catholic  countries  by  pictures. 
They  presented  Mysteries,  and  often  at  great  expense ;  and  rel- 
iques  of  this  system  still  remain  in  the  south  of  Europe,  and  in- 
deed throughout  Italy,  where  at  Christmas  the  convents  and  the 
great  nobles  rival  each  other  in  the  scenic  representation  of  the 
birth  of  Christ  and  its  circumstances.  I  heard  two.  instances 
mentioned  to  me  at  different  times,  one  in  Sicily  and  the  other  in 
Rome,  of  noble  devotees,  the  ruin  of  whose  fortunes  was  said  to 
have  commenced  in  the  extravagant  expense  which  had  been 
incurred  in  presenting  the  prcesepe  or  manger.  But  these  Mys- 
teries, in  order  to  answer  their  design,  must  not  only  be  instruc- 
tive, but  entertaining  ;  and  as,  when  they  became  so,  the  people 
began  to  take  pleasure  in  acting  them  themselves — in  interloping, 
— (against  which  the  priests  seem  to  have  fought  hard  and  yet  in 
vain)  the  most  ludicrous  images  were  mixed  with  the  most  awful 
personations  ;  and  whatever  the  subject  might  be,  however  sub* 
lime,  however  pathetic,  yet  the  Vice  and  the  Devil,  who  are  the 


32  PROGRESS   OF   THE   DRAMA. 

genuine  antecessors  of  Harlequin  and  the  Clown,  were  necessary 
component  parts.  I  have  myself  a  piece  of  this  kind  which  I 
transcribed  a  few  years  ago  at  Helmstadt,  in  Germany,  on  the 
education  of  Eve's  children,  in  which  after  the  fall  and  repent- 
ance of  Adam,  the  offended  Maker,  as  in  proof  of  his  reconcilia- 
tion, condescends  to  visit  them,  and  to  catechize  the  children, — 
who  with  a  noble  contempt  of  chronology  are  all  brought  togethel 
from  Abel  to  Noah.  The  good  children  say  the  ten  Command- 
ments, the  Belief  and  the  Lord's  Prayer;  but  Cain  and  his  rout, 
after  he  had  received  a  box  on  the  ear  for  not  taking  off  his  hat, 
and  afterwards  offering  his  left  hand,  is  prompted  by  the  devil 
so  to  blunder  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  as  to  reverse  the  petitions  and 
say  it  backward  !* 

Unaffectedly  I  declare  I  feel  pain  at  repetitions  like  these, 
however  innocent.  As  historical  documents  they  are  valuable  ; 
but  I  am  sensible  that  what  I  can  read  with  my  eye  with  perfect 
innocence,  \  can  not  without  inward  fear  and  misgivings  pro 
nounce  with  my  tongue. 

Let  me,  however,  be  acquitted  of  presumption  if  I  say  that  I 
can  not  agree  with  Mr.  Malone,  that  our  ancestors  did  not  per 
ceive  the  ludicrous  in  these  things,  or  that  they  paid  no  separate 
attention  to  the  serious  and  comic  parts.  Indeed  his  own  state- 
ment contradicts  it.  For  what  purpose  should  the  Vice  leap 
upon  the  Devil's  back  and  belabor  him,  but  to  produce  this  sepa- 
rate attention  ?  The  people  laughed  heartily,  no  doubt.  Nor 
can  I  conceive  any  meaning  attached  to  the  words  "  separate  at- 
tention," that  is  not  fully  answered  by  one  part  of  an  exhibition 
exciting  seriousness  or  pity,  and  the  other  raising  mirth  and  loud 
laughter.  That  they  felt  no  impiety  in  the  affair  is  most  true. 
For  it  is  the  very  essence  of  that  system  of  Christian  polytheism, 
which  in  all  its  essentials  is  now  fully  as  gross  in  Spain,  in  Sicily 
and  the  south  of  Italy,  as  it  ever  was  in  England  in  the  days  of 
Henry  VI. — (nay,  more  so,  for  a  "WiclifFe  had  not  then  appeared 
only,  but  scattered  the  good  seed  widely),  it  is  an  essential  part,  1 
say,  of  that  system  to  draw  the  mind  wholly  from  its  own  inward 
whispers  and  quiet  discriminations,  and  to  habituate  the  con- 
science to  pronounce  sentence  in  every  case  according  to  the  es- 
tablished verdicts  of  the  church  and  the  casuists.     I  have  looked 

*  See  pp.  238,  239,  where  this  is  told  more  at  length  and  attributed  tc 
Hans  Sachs. —  Ed 


PROGRESS   OF   THE   DRAMA.  33 

through  volume  after  volume  of  the  most  approved  casuists, 

and  still  I  find  disquisitions  whether  this  or  that  act  is  right,  and 
under  what  circumstances,  to  a  minuteness  that  makes  reasoning 
ridiculous,  and  of  a  callous  and  unnatural  immodesty,  to  which 
none  but  a  monk  could  harden  himself,  Avho  has  been  stripped  of 
all  the  tender  charities  of  life,  yet  is  goaded  on  to  make  war 
against  them  by  the  unsubdued  hauntings  of  our  meaner  nature, 
even  as  dogs  are  said  to  get  the  hydrophobia  from  excessive  thirst. 
I  fully  believe  that  our  ancestors  laughed  as  heartily,  as  their 
posterity  do  at  Grimaldi  ; — and  not  having  been  told  that  they 
would  be  punished  for  laughing,  they  thought  it  very  innocent  ; 
and  if  their  priests  had  left  out  murder  in  the  catalogue  of  their 
prohibitions  (as  indeed  they  did  under  certain  circumstances  of 
heresy),  the  greater  part  of  them, — the  moral  instincts  common 
to  all  men  having  been  smothered  and  kept  from  development, — 
would  have  thought  as  little  of  murder. 

However  this  may  be,  the  necessity  of  at  once  instructing  and 
gratifying  the  people  produced  the  great  distinction  between  the 
Greek  and  the  English  theatres  ; — for  to  this  we  must  attribute 
tho  origin  of  tragi-comedy,  or  a  representation  of  human  events 
more  lively,  nearer  the  truth,  and  permitting  a  larger  field  of 
moral  instruction,  a  more  ample  exhibition  of  the  recesses  of  the 
human  heart,  under  all  the  trials  and  circumstances  that  most 
concern  us,  than  was  known  or  guessed  at  by  iEschylus,  Sophocles, 
or  Euripides  ; — and  at  the  same  time  we  learn  to  account  for,  and 
— relatively  to  the  author — perceive  the  necessity  of,  the  Fool  or 
Clown,  or  both,  as  the  substitutes  of  the  Vice  and  the  Devil, 
which  our  ancestors  had  been  so  accustomed  to  see  in  every  ex- 
hibition of  the  stage,  that  they  could  not  feel  any  performance 
perfect  without  them.  Even  to  this  day  in  Italy,  every  opera — 
(even  Metastasio  obeyed  the  claim  throughout) — must  have  six 
characters,  generally  two  pairs  of  cross  lovers,  a  tyrant  and  a  con- 
fidant, or  a  father  and  two  confidants,  themselves  lovers ; — and 
when  a  new  opera  appears,  it  is  the  universal  fashion  to  ask — 
which  is  the  tyrant,  which  the  lover  ?   &c. 

It  is  the  especial  honor  of  Christianity,  that  in  its  worst  and 
most  corrupted  form  it  can  not  wholly  separate  itself  from 
morality ; — whereas  the  other  religions  in  their  best  form  (I  do 
not  include  Mohammedanism,  which  is  only  an  anomalous  corrup- 
tion of  Christianity,  like  Swedenborgianism),  have  no  connection 


34  PROGRESS   OF  THE   DRAMA. 

with  it.  The  very  impersonation  of  moral  evil  under  the  name 
of  Vice,  facilitated  all  other  impersonations  ;  and  hence  we  see 
that  the  Mysteries  were  succeeded  by  Moralities,  or  dialogues  and 
plots  of  allegorical  personages.  Again,  some  character  in  real 
history  had  become  so  famous,  so  proverbial,  as  Nero  for  instance, 
that  they  were  introduced  instead  of  the  moral  quality,  for  which 
they  were  so  noted  ; — and  in  this  manner  the  stage  was  moving 
on  to  the  absolute  production  of  heroic  and  comic  real  characters, 
when  the  restoration  of  literature,  followed  by  the  ever-blessed 
Reformation,  let  in  upon  the  kingdom  not  Only  new  knowledge, 
but  new  motive.  A  useful  rivalry  commenced  between  the  me- 
tropolis on  the  one  hand,  the  residence,  independently  of  the 
court  and  nobles,  of  the  most  active  and  stirring  spirits  who  had 
not  been  regularly  educated,  or  who,  from  mischance  or  other- 
wise, had  forsaken  the  beaten  track  of  preferment, — and  the 
universities  on  the  other.  The  latter  prided  themselves  on  their 
closer  approximation  to  the  ancient  rules  and  ancient  regularity 
— taking  the  theatre  of  Greece,  or  rather  its  dim  reflection,  the 
rhetorical  tragedies  of  the  poet  Seneca,  as  a  perfect  ideal,  without 
any  critical  collation  of  the  times,  origin,  or  circumstances  ; — 
whilst,  in  the  meantime,  the  popular  writers,  who  could  not,  and 
would  not  abandon  what  they  had  found  to  delight  their  coun- 
trymen sincerely,  and  not  merely  from  inquiries  first  put  to  the 
recollection  of  rules,  and  answered  in  the  affirmative,  as  if  it 
had  been  an  arithmetical  sum,  did  yet  borrow  from  the  scholars 
whatever  they  advantageously  could,  consistently  with  their  own 
peculiar  means  of  pleasing. 

And  here  let  me  pause  for  a  moment's  contemplation  of  this 
interesting  subject. 

We  call,  for  we  see  and  feel,  the  swan  and  the  dove  both 
transcendently  beautiful.  As  absurd  as  it  would  be  to  institute 
a  comparison  between  their  separate  claims  to  beauty  from  any 
abstract  rule  common  to  both,  without  reference  to  the  life  and 
being  of  the  animals  themselves, — or  as  if,  having  first  seen  the 
dove,  we  abstracted  its  outlines,  gave  them  a  false  generalization, 
called  them  the  principles  or  ideal  of  bird-beauty,  and  then  pro- 
ceeded to  criticize  the  swan  or  the  eagle  ; — not  less  absurd  is  it  to 
pass  judgment  on  the  works  of  a  poet  on  the  mere  ground  that 
they  have  been  called  by  the  same  class-name  with  the  works  of 
other  poets  in  other  times  and  circumstances,  or  on  any  ground 


PROGRESS   OF  THE   DRAMa,  35 

indeed,  save  that  of  their  inappropriateness  to  their  own  eni  and 
being,  their  want  of  significance,  as  symbols  or  physiognomy. 

0  !  few  have  there  been  among  critics,  who  have  followed  with 
the  eye  of  the  imagination  the  imperishable  yet  ever  wandering 
spirit  of  poetry  through  its  various  metempsychoses,  and  conse- 
quent metamorphoses  ;  or  who  have  rejoiced  in  the  light  of  clear 
perception  at  beholding  with  each  new  birth,  with  each  rare 
avatar,  the  human  race  frame  to  itself  a  new  body,  by  assimila- 
ting materials  of  nourishment  out  of  its  new  circumstances,  and 
work  for  itself  new  organs  of  power  appropriate  to  the  new 
sphere  of  its  motion  and  activity!  (d) 

1  have  before  spoken  of  the  Romance,  or  the  language  formed 
out  of  the  decayed  Roman  and  the  Northern  tongues  ;  and  com- 
paring it  with  the  Latin,  we  find  it  less  perfect  in  simplicity  and 
relation — the  privileges  of  a  language  formed  by  the  mere  attrac- 
tion of  homogeneous  parts  ; — but  yet  more  rich,  more  expressive 
and  various,  as  one  formed  by  more  obscure  affinities  out  of  a 
chaos  of  apparently  heterogeneous  atoms.  As  more  than  a 
metaphor, — as  an  analogy  of  this,  I  have  named  the  true  genu 
ine  modern  poetry  the  romantic  ;  and  the  works  of  Shakspeare 
are  romantic  poetry  revealing  itself  in  the  drama.  If  the  trage- 
dies of  Sophocles  are  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word  tragedies,  and 
the  comedies  of  Aristophanes  comedies,  we  must  emancipate  our- 
selves from  a  false  association  arising  from  misapplied  names, 
and  find  a  new  word  for  the  plays  of  Shakspeare.  For  they  are, 
in  the  ancient  sense,  neither  tragedies  nor  comedies,  nor  both  in 
one, — but  a  different  genus,  diverse  in  kind,  and  not  merely  dif- 
ferent in  degree.  They  may  be  called  romantic  dramas,  or 
dramatic  romances,  (e) 

A  deviation  from  the  simple  forms  and  unities  of  the  ancient 
stage  is  an  essential  principle,  and,  of  course,  an  appropriate  ex- 
cellence, of  the  romantic  drama.  For  these  unities  were  to  a 
great  extent  the  natural  form  of  that  which  in  its  elements  was 
homogeneous,  and  the  representation  of  which  was  addressed  pre- 
eminently to  the  outward  senses  ; — and  though  the  fable,  the  lan- 
guage and  the  characters  appealed  to  the  reason  rather  than  to 
the  mere  understanding,  inasmuch  as  they  supposed  an  ideal  state 
rather  than  referred  to  an  existing  reality — yet  it  was  a  reason 
which  was  obliged  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  senses,  and  so  far 
became  a  sort   of  more  elevated  understanding.     On  the   other 


36  PROGRESS   OF   THE   DRAMA. 

hand,  the  romantic  poetry — the  Shaksperian  drama — appealed 
to  the  imagination  rather  than  to  the  senses,  and  to  the  reason  as 
contemplating  our  inward  nature,  and  the  workings  of  the  pas- 
sions in  their  most  retired  recesses.  But  the  reason,  as  reason,  is 
independent  of  time  and  space  ;  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  them  : 
and  hence  the  certainties  of  reason  have  been  called  eternal 
1  ruths.  As  for  example — the  endless  properties  of  the  circle  ; — 
what  connection  have  they  with  this  or  that  age,  with  this  or 
that  country  ? — The  reason  is  aloof  from  time  and  space ;  the 
imagination  is  an  arbitrary  controller  over  both  ; — and  if  only  the 
poet  have  such  power  of  exciting  our  internal  emotions  as  to  make 
us  present  to  the  scene  in  imagination  chiefly,  he  acquires  the 
right  and  privilege  of  using  time  and  space  as  they  exist  in  ima- 
gination, and  obedient  only  to  the  laws  by  which  the  imagination 
itself  acts  (/).  These  laws  it  will  be  my  object  and  aim  to  point 
out  as  the  examples  occur,  which  illustrate  them.  But  here  let 
me  remark  what  can  never  be  too  often  reflected  on  by  all  who 
would  intelligently  study  the  works  either  of  the  Athenian  dram- 
atists, or  of  Shakspeare,  that  the  very  essence  of  the  former  con- 
sists in  the  sternest  separation  of  the  diverse  in  kind  and  the  dis- 
parate in  the  degree,  whilst  the  latter  delights  in  interlacing,  by 
a  rainbow-like  transfusion  of  hues,  the  one  with  the  other. 

And  here  it  will  be  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  on  the  stage 
and  on  stage-illusion. 

A  theatre,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  is  the  general  term 
for  all  places  of  amusement  through  the  ear  or  eye,  in  which  men 
assemble  in  order  to  be  amused  by  some  entertainment  presented 
to  all  at  the  same  time  and  in  common.  Thus,  an  old  Puritan 
divine  says  : — "  Those  who  attend  public  worship  and  sermons 
only  to  amuse  themselves,  make  a  theatre  of  the  church,  and 
turn  God's  house  into  the  devil's.  Theatra  cedes  diabolola- 
tricai"  The  most  important  and  dignified  species  of  this  genus 
is,  doubtless,  the  stage  (res  theatralis  histrionica),  which,  in  ad- 
dition to  the  generic  definition  above  given,  maybe  characterized 
in  its  idea,  or  according  to  what  it  does,  or  ought  to,  aim  at,  as  a 
combination  of  several  or  of  all  the  fine  arts  in  an  harmonious 
whole,  having  a  distinct  end  of  its  own,  to  which  the  peculiar  end 
of  each  of  the  component  arts,  taken  separately,  is  made  subordi- 
nate and  subservient- — that,  namely,  of  imitating  reality — wheth« 
er  external  things,  actions,  or  passions — under  a  semblance  of  re* 


PROGRESS   OF   THE    DRAMA.  87 

ality.  Thus,  Claude  imitates  a  landscape  at  sunset,  but  only  aa 
a  picture  ;  while  a  forest-scene  is  not  presented  to  the  spectators 
as  a  picture,  but  as  a  forest;  and  though,  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
word,  we  are  no  more  deceived  by  the  one  than  by  the  other,  yet 
are  our  feelings  very  differently  affected ;  and  the  pleasure  de- 
rived from  the  one  is  nof  composed  of  the  same  elements  as  that 
afforded  by  the  other,  even  on  the  supposition  that  the  quantum 
of  both  were  equal.  In  the  former,  a  picture,  it  is  a  condition  of 
all  genuine  delight  that  we  should  not  be  deceived  ;  in  the  latter, 
stage-scenery  (inasmuch  as  its  principal  end  is  not  in  or  for  itself, 
as  is  the  case  in  a  picture,  but  to  be  an  assistance  and  means  to 
an  end  out  of  itself),  its  very  purpose  is  to  produce  as  much  illu- 
sion as  its  nature  permits.  These,  and  all  other  stage  presenta- 
tions, are  to  produce  a  sort  of  temporary  half-faith,  which  the 
spectator  encourages  in  himself  and  supports  by  a  voluntary  con- 
tribution on  his  own  part,  because  he  knows  that  it  is  at  all  times 
in  his  power  to  see  the  thing  as  it  really  is.  I  have  often  ob- 
served that  little  children  are  actually  deceived  by  stage-scenery, 
never  by  pictures ;  though  even  these  produce  an  effect  on  their 
impressible  minds,  which  they  do  not  on  the  minds  of  adults. 
The  child,  if  strongly  impressed,  does  not  indeed  positively  think 
the  picture  to  be  the  reality ;  but  yet  he  does  not  think  the  con- 
trary. As  Sir  George  Beaumont  was  showing  me  a  very  fine 
engraving  from  Rubens,  representing  a  storm  at  sea  without  any 
vessel  or  boat  introduced,  my  little  boy,  then  about  five  years 
old,  came  dancing  and  singing  into  the  room,  and  all  at  once  (if  I 
may  so  say)  tumbled  in  upon  the  print.  He  instantly  started, 
stood  silent  and  motionless,  with  the  strongest  expression,  first  of 
wonder  and  then  of  grief  in  his  eyes  and  countenance,  and  at 
length  said,  "  And  where  is  the  ship  ?  But  that  is  sunk,  and  the 
men  are  all  drowned  !"  still  keeping  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  print 
Now  what  pictures  are  to  little  children,  stage  illusion  is  to  men, 
provided  they  retain  any  part  of  the  child's  sensibility  ;  except,  that 
in  the  latter  instance,  the  suspension  of  the  act  of  comparison, 
which  permits  this  sort  of  negative  belief,  is  somewhat  more  as- 
sisted by  the  will,  than  in  that  of  a  child  respecting  a  picture. 

The  true  stage-illusion  in  this  and  in  all  other  things  consists— 
not  in  the  mind's  judging  it  to  be  a  forest,  but,  in  its  remission  of 
the  judgment  that  it  is  not  a  forest.  And  this  subject  of  stage- 
illusion  is  so  important,  and  so  many  practical  errors  and  false 


88  PROGRESS  OF  THE   DRAMA. 

criticisms  may  arise,  and  indeed  have  arisen,  either  from  reason- 
ing on  it  as  actual  delusion  (the  strange  notion,  on  which  the 
French  critics  built  up  their  theory,  and  on  which  the  French 
poets  justify  the  construction  of  their  tragedies),  or  from  denying 
it  altogether  (which  seems  the  end  of  Dr.  Johnson's  reasoning, 
and  which,  as  extremes  meet,  would  lead  to  the  very  same  conse- 
quences, by  excluding  whatever  would  not  be  judged  probable  by 
us  in  our  coolest  state  of  feeling,  with  all  our  faculties  in  even 
balance),  that  these  few  remarks  will,  I  hope,  be  pardoned,  if 
they  should  serve  either  to  explain  or  to  illustrate  the  point. 
For  not  only  are  we  never  absolutely  deluded — or  any  thing  like 
it,  but  the  attempt  to  cause  the  highest  delusion  possible  to  beings 
in  their  senses  sitting  in  a  theatre,  is  a  gross  fault,  incident  only 
to  low  minds,  which,  feeling  that  they  can  not  affect  the  heart 
or  head  permanently,  endeavor  to  call  forth  the  momentary  affec- 
tions. There  ought  never  to  be  more  pain  than  is  compatible 
with  co-existing  pleasure,  and  to  be  amply  repaid  by  thought. 

Shakspeare  found  the  infant  stage  demanding  an  intermixture 
of  ludicrous  character  as  imperiously  as  that  of  Greece  did  the 
chorus,  and  high  language  accordant.  And  there  are  many  ad- 
vantages in  this ; — a  greater  assimilation  to  nature,  a  greater 
scope  of  power,  more  truths,  and  more  feelings  ; — the  effects  of 
contrast,  as  in  Lear  and  the  Fool ;  and  especially  this,  that  the 
true  language  of  passion  becomes  sufficiently  elevated  by  your 
having  previously  heard,  in  the  same  piece,  the  lighter  conversa- 
tion of  men  under  no  strong  emotion.  The  very  nakedness  of 
the  stage,  too,  was  advantageous — for  the  drama  thence  became 
something  between  a  recitation  and  a  re-presentation  ;  and  the 
absence  or  paucity  of  scenes  allowed  a  freedom  from  the  laws  of 
unity  of  place  and  unity  of  time,  the  observance  of  which  must 
either  confine  the  drama  to  as  few  subjects  as  may  be  counted  on 
the  fingers,  or  involve  gross  improbabilities,  far  more  striking 
than  the  violation  would  have  caused.  Thence,  also,  was  pre- 
cluded the  danger  of  a  false  ideal — of  aiming  at  more  than  what 
is  possible  on  the  whole.  "What  play  of  the  ancients,  with  refer- 
ence to  their  ideal,  does  not  hold  out  more  glaring  absurdities  than 
any  in  Shakspeare  ?  On  the  Greek  plan  a  man  could  more  easily 
be  a  poet  than  a  dramatist ;  upon  our  plan  more  easily  a  drama- 
tist than  a  poet. 


THE  DRAMA  GENERALLY.  39 


THE  DRAMA  GENERALLY,  AND  PUBLIC  TASTE. 

Unaccustomed  to  address  such  an  audience,  and  having  lost 
by  a  long  interval  of  confinement  the  advantages  of  my  former 
short  schooling,  I  had  miscalculated  in  my  last  Lecture  the  pro- 
portion of  my  matter  to  my  time,  and  by  bad  economy  and  un- 
skilful management,  the  several  heads  of  rny  discourse  failed  in 
making  the  entire  performance  correspond  with  the  promise  pub- 
licly circulated  in  the  weekly  annunciation  of  the  subjects,  to  be 
treated.  It  would  indeed  have  been  wiser  in  me,  and  perhaps 
better  on  the  whole,  if  I  had  caused  my  Lectures  to  be  announ- 
ced only  as  continuations  of  the  main  subject.  But  if  I  be,  as 
perforce  I  must  be,  gratified  by  the  recollection  of  whatever  has 
appeared  to  give  you  pleasure,  I  am  conscious  of  something  bet- 
ter, though  less  flattering,  a  sense  of  unfeigned  gratitude  for  your 
forbearance  with  my  defects.  Like  affectionate  guardians,  you 
see  without  disgust  the  awkwardness,  and  witness  with  sympathy 
the  growing  pains,  of  a  youthful  endeavor,  and  look  forward  with 
a  hope,  which  is  its  own  reward,  to  the  contingent  results  of 
practice — to  its  intellectual  maturity. 

In  my  last  address  I  defined  poetry  to  be  the  art,  or  whatever 
better  term  our  language  may  afford,  of  representing  external 
nature  and  human  thoughts,  both  relatively  to  human  affections, 
so  as  to  cause  the  production  of  as  great  immediate  pleasure  in 
each  part  as  is  compatible  with  the  largest  possible  sum  of  pleas- 
ure on  the  whole.  Now  this  definition  applies  equally  to  paint- 
ing and  music  as  to  poetry  ;  and  in  truth  the  term  poetry  is  alike 
applicable  to  all  three.  The  vehicle  alone  constitutes  the  differ- 
ence ;  and  the  term  '  poetry'  is  rightly  applied  by  eminence  to 
measured  words,  only  because  the  sphere  of  their  action  is  far 
wider,  the  power  of  giving  permanence  to  them  much  more  cer- 
tain, and  incomparably  greater  the  facility,  by  which  men,  not 
defective  by  nature  or  disease,  may  be  enabled  to  derive  habitual 
pleasure  and  instruction  from  them.  ,  On  my  mentioning  these 
considerations  to  a  painter  of  great  genius,  who  had  been,  from 
a  most  honorable  enthusiasm,  extolling  his  own  art,  he  was  so 
struck  with  their  truth,  that  he  exclaimed,  "I  want  no  other  ar- 
guments ; — poetry,  that  is,  verbal  poetry,  must  be  the  greatest ; 
all  that  proves  final  causes  in  the  world,  proves  this  ;  it  would 


40  THE   DRAMA  GENERALLY, 

be  shocking  to  tliink  otherwise  !" — And  in  truth,  deeply,  0  !  far 
more  than  words  can  express,  as  I  venerate  the  Last  Judgment 
and  the  Prophets  of  Michel  Angelo  Buonaroti, — yet  the  very 
pain  which  I  repeatedly  felt  as  I  lost  myself  in  gazing  upon 
them,  the  painful  consideration  that  their  having  been  painted  in 
fresco  was  the  sole  cause  that  they  had  not  been  abandoned  to 
all  the  accidents  of  a  dangerous  transportation  to  a  distant  capi- 
tal, and  that  the  same  caprice  which  made  the  Neapolitan  sol- 
diery destroy  all  the  exquisite  masterpieces  on  the  walls  of  the 
church  of  the  Trinitado  Mcnte,  after  the  retreat  of  their  antag- 
onist barbarians,  might  as  easily  have  made  vanish  the  rooms 
and  open  gallery  of  Raffael,  and  the  yet  more  unapproachable 
wonders  of  the  sublime  Florentine  in  the  Sixtine  Chapel,  forced 
upon  my  mind  the  reflection  :  How  grateful  the  human  race 
ought  to  be  that  the  works  of  Euclid,  Newton,  Plato,  Milton, 
Shakspeare,  are  not  subjected  to  similar  contingencies, — that 
they  and  their  .fellows,  and  the  great,  though  inferior,  peerage  of 
undying  intellect,  are  secured  ; — secured  even  from  a  second  ir- 
ruption of  Goths  and  Yandals,  in  addition  to  many  other  safe- 
guards, by  the  vast  empire  of  English  language,  laws,  and  reli- 
gion founded  in  America,  through  the  overflow  of  the  power  and 
the  virtue  of  my  country  ; — and  that  now  the  great  and  certain 
works  of  genuine  fame  can  only  cease  to  act  for  mankind,  when 
men  themselves  cease  to  be  men,  or  when  the  planet  on  which 
they  exist,  shall  have  altered  its  relations,  or  have  ceased  to  be 
Lord  Bacon,  in  the  language  of  the  gods,  if  I  may  use  an  Ho 
meric  phrase,  has  expressed  a  similar  thought  : — 

Lastly,  leaving  the  vulgar  arguments,  that  by  learning  man  excelleth 
man  in  that  wherein  man  excelleth  beasts ;  that  by  learning  man  ascendeth 
to  the  heavens  and  their  motions,  where  in  body  he  can  not  come,  and  the 
like ;  let  us  conclude  with  the  dignity  and  excellency  of  knowledge  and 
learning  in  that  whereunto  man's  nature  doth  most  aspire,  which  is,  im- 
mortality or  continuance  :  for  to  this  tendeth  generation,  and  raising  houses 
and  families ;  to  this  tend  buildings,  foundations,  and  monuments ;  to  this 
tendeth  the  desire  of  memory,  fame,  and  celebration,  and  in  effect  the 
strength  of  all  other  human  desires.  We  see  then  how  far  the  monuments 
of  wit  and  learning  are  more  durable  than  the  monuments  of  power,  or  of 
the  hauds.  For  have  not  the  verses  of  Homer  continued  twenty -five  hun- 
dred years,  or  more,  without  the  loss  of  a  syllable  or  letter  ;  during  which 
time,  infinite  palaces,  temples,  castles,  cities,  have  been  decayed  and  demol- 
ished ?  It  is  not  possible  to  have  the  true  pictures  or  statues  of  Cyrus, 
Alexander,  Coesar  ;  no,  nor  of  the  kings  or  great  personages  of  mu'^h  later 


AND   PUBLIC   TASTE.  41 

years ;  for  tlie  originals  can  not  last,  and  the  copies  can  not  but  lose  of  the 
life  and  truth.  But  the  images  of  men's  wits  and  knowledges  remain  in 
books,  exempted  from  the  wrong  of  time,  and  capable  of  perpetual  renova- 
tion. Neither  are  they  fitly  to  be  called  images,  because  they  generate 
still,  and  cast  their  seeds  in  the  minds  of  others,  provoking  and  causing  in- 
finite actions  and  opinions  in  succeeding  ages  :  so  that,  if  the  invention  of 
the  sbip  was  thought  so  noble,  which  carrieth  riches  and  commodities  from 
place  to  place,  and  consociateth  the  most  remote  regions  in  participation  of 
their  fruits ;  how  much  more  are  letters  to  be  magnified,  which,  as  ships, 
pass  through  the  vast  seas  of  time,  and  make  ages  so  distant  to  participate 
of  the  wisdom,  illuminations,  and  inventions,  the  one  of  the  other  ?* 

But  let  us  now  consider  what  the  drama  should  be.  And 
first,  it  is  not  a  copy,  but  an  imitation,  of  nature.  This  is  the 
universal  principle  of  the  fine  arts.  In  all  well  laid  out  grounds 
what  delight  do  we  feel  from  that  balance  and  antithesis  of  feel- 
ings and  thoughts  !  Hoipv  natural !  we  say  ; — but  the  very  won- 
der which  caused  the  exclamation,  implies  that  we  perceived 
art  at  the  same  moment.  "We  catch  the  hint  from  nature  itself. 
Whenever  in  mountains  or  cataracts  we  discover  a  likeness  to  any 
thing  artificial  which  yet  we  know  is  not  artificial — what  pleas- 
ure !  And  so  it  is  in  appearances  known  to  be  artificial,  which 
appear  to  be  natural.  This  applies  in  due  degrees,  regulated  by 
steady  good  sense,  from  a  clump  of  trees  to  the  Paradise  Lost  or 
Othello.  It  would  be  easy  to  apply  it  to  painting,  and  even, 
though  with  greater  abstraction  of  thought,  and  by  more  subtle 
yet  equally  just  analogies — to  music.  But  this  belongs  to  others  ; 
suffice  it  that  one  great  principle  is  common  to  all  the  fine  arts, 
a  principle  which  probably  is  the  condition  of  all  consciousness, 
without  which  we  should  feel  and  imagine  only  by  discontinuous 
moments,  and  be  plants  or  brute  animals  instead  of  men  ; — I 
mean  that  ever-varying  balance,  or  balancing,  of  images,  no- 
tions, or  feelings,  conceived  as  in  opposition  to  each  other  ; — in 
short,  the  perception  of  identity  and  contrariety  ;  the  least  de- 
gree of  which  constitutes  likeness,  the  greatest  absolute  diffci- 
erice  ;  but  the  infinite  gradations  between  these  two  form  all  the 
play  and  all  the  interest  of  our  intellectual  and  moral  being,  till 
it  leads  us  to  a  feeling  and  an  object  more  awful  than  it  seems 
to  me  compatible  with  even  the  present  subject  to  utter  aloud  ; 
though  I  am  most  desirous  to  suggest  it.  For  there  alone  are  all 
things  at  once  different  and  the  same  ;  there  alone,  as  the  prin- 

*  Advancement  of  Learning,  book  1.  subjine. 


42 

ciple  of  all  things,  does  distinction  exist  unaided  by  division. , 
there  are  will  and  reason,  succession  of  time  and  unmoving  eter- 
nity, infinite  change  and  ineffable  rest ! — 

Return,  Alpheus  !  the  dread  voice  is  past 
Which  shrunk  thy  streams  ! 

Thou  honor'd  flood, 

Smooth-flowi7ig  Avon,  crown'd  -with  vocal  reeds, 
That  strain  I  heard  was  of  a  higher  mood  ! — 
But  now  my  voice  proceeds. 

We  may  divide  a  dramatic  poet's  characteristics  before  we 
enter  into  the  component  merits  of  any  one  work,  and  with  refer- 
ence only  to  those  things  which  arc  to  be  the  materials  of  all, 
into  language,  passion,  and  character  ;  always  bearing  in  mind 
that  these  must  act  and  react  on  each  other, — the  language  in- 
spired by  the  passion,  and  the  language  and  the  passion  modified 
and  differenced  by  the  character.  To  the  production  of  the  high- 
est excellences  in  these  three,  there  are  requisite  in  the  mind  of 
the  author  ; — good  sense  ;  talent  ;  sensibility  ;  imagination  ; — 
and  to  the  perfection  of  a  work  we  should  add  two  faculties  of 
lesser  importance,  yet  necessary  for  the  ornaments  and  foliage  of 
the  column  and  the  roof — fancy  and  a  quick  sense  of  beauty. 

As  to  language  ; — it  can  not  be  supposed  that  the  poet  should 
make  his  characters  say  all  that  they  would,  or  that,  his  whole 
drama  considered,  each  scene,  or  paragraph  should  be  such  as, 
on  cool  examination,  we  can  conceive  it  likely  that  men  in  such 
situations  would  say,  in  that  order,  or  with  that  perfection.  And 
yet,  according  to  my  feelings,  it  is  a  very  inferior  kind  of  poetry, 
in  which,  as  in  the  French  tragedies,  men  are  made  to  talk 
in  a  style  which  few  indeed  even  of  the  wittiest  can  be  supposed 
to  converse  in,  and  which  both  is,  and  on  a  moment's  reflection 
appears  to  be,  the  natural  produce  of  the  hot-bed  of  vanity, 
namely,  the  closet  of  an  author,  who  is  actuated  originally  by  a 
desire  to  excite  surprise  and  wonderment  at  his  own  superiority 
to  other  men, — instead  of  having  felt  so  deeply  on  certain  sub- 
jects, or  in  consequence  of  certain  imaginations,  as  to  make  it 
almost  a  necessity  of  his  nature  to  seek  for  sympathy, — no  doubt, 
with  that  honorable  desire  of  permanent  action  which  distin- 
guishes genius. — Where  then  is  the  difference  ? — In  this,  that 
each  part  should  be  proportionate,  though  the  whole  may  be  per- 


AND   TUBLIC   TASTE.  4b 

haps  impossible  At  all  events,  it  should  be  compatible  with 
sound  sense  and  logic  in  the  mind  of  the  poet  himself. 

It  is  to  be  lamented  that  we  judge  of  books  by  books,  instead 
of  referring  what  we  read  to  oar  own  experience.  One  great  use 
of  books  is  to  make  their  contents  a  motive  for  observation.  The 
German  tragedies  have  in  some  respects  been  justly  ridiculed. 
In  them  the  dramatist  often  becomes  a  novelist  in  his  directions 
to  the  actors,  and  thus  degrades  tragedy  into  pantomime.  Yet 
still  the  consciousness  of  the  poet's  mind  must  be  diffused  over 
that  of  the  reader  or  spectator  ;  but  he  himself,  according  to  his 
genius,  elevates  us,  and  by  being  always  in  keeping,  prevents  us 
from  perceiving  any  strangeness,  though  we  feel  great  exultation. 
Many  different  kinds  of  style  may  be  admirable,  both  in  different 
men,  and  in  different  parts  of  the  same  poem. 

See  the  different  language  which  strong  feelings  may  justify  in 
Shylock,  and  learn  from  Shakspeare's  conduct  of  that  character 
the  terrible  force  of  every  plain  and  calm  diction,  when  known 
to  proceed  from  a  resolved  and  impassioned  man. 

It  is  especially  with  reference  to  the  drama,  and  its  character- 
istics in  any  given  nation,  or  at  any  particular  period,  that  the 
dependence  of  genius  on  the  public  taste  becomes  a  matter  of  the 
deepest  importance.  I  do  not  mean  that  taste  which  springs 
merely  from  caprice  or  fashionable  imitation,  and  which,  in  fact, 
genius  can  and  by  degrees  will,  create  for  itself;  but  that  which 
arises  out  of  wide-grasping  and  heart-enrooted  causes,  which  is 
epidemic,  and  in  the  very  air  that  all  breathe.  This  it  is  which 
kills,  or  withers,  or  corrupts.  Socrates,  indeed,  might  walk  arm 
and  arm  with  Hygeia,  whilst  pestilence,  with  a  thousand  furies 
running  to  and  fro,  and  clashing  against  each  other  in  a  com- 
plexity and  agglomeration  of  horrors,  was  shooting  her  darts  of 
fire  and  venom  all  around  him.  Even  such  was  Milton;  yea, 
and  such,  in  spite  of  all  that  has  been  babbled  by  his  critics  in 
pretended  excuse  for  his  damning,  because  for  them  too  profound 
excellences, — such  was  Shakspeare.  But  alas  !  the  exceptions 
prove  the  rule.  For  who  will  dare  to  force  his  way  out  of  the 
crowd, — not  of  the  mere  vulgar, — but  of  the  vain  and  banded 
aristocracy  of  intellect,  and  presume  to  join  the  almost  supernat- 
ural beings  that  stand  by  themselves  aloof? 

Of  this  diseased  epidemic  influence  there  are  two  forms  es- 
pecially preclusive   of  tragic  worth.     The  first  is  the  necessary 


growth  of  a  sense  and  love  of  the  ludicrous,  and  a  morbid  sensibility 
of  the  assimilative  power, — an  inflammation  produced  by  cold 
and  weakness, — which  in  the  boldest  burst  of  passion  will  lie  in 
wait  for  a  jeer  at  any  phrase,  that  may  have  an  accidental  coin- 
cidence in  the  mere  words  with  something  base  or  trivial.  For 
instance, — to  express  woods,  not  on  a  plain,  but  clothing  a  hill, 
which  overlooks  a  valley,  or  dell,  or  river,  or  the  sea, — the  trees 
rising  one  above  another,  as  the  spectators  in  an  ancient  theatre, 
— I  know  no  other  word  in  our  language  (bookish  and  pedantic 
terms  out  of  the  question)  but  hanging  woods,  the  sylvcs  super- 
impendentes  of  Catullus  ;#  yet  let  some  wit  call  out  in  a  slang 
tone, — "the  gallows  !"  and  a  peal  of  laughter  would  damn  the 
play.  Hence  it  is  that  so  many  dull  pieces  have  had  a  decent 
run,  only  because  nothing  unusual  above,  or  absurd  below,  medi- 
ocrity furnished  an  occasion, — a  spark  for  the  explosive  materials 
collected  behind  the  orchestra.  But  it  would  take  a  volume  of 
no  ordinary  size,  however  laconically  the  sense  were  expressed, 
if  it  were  meant  to  instance  the  effects,  and  unfold  all  the  causes, 
of  this  disposition  upon  the  moral,  intellectual,  and  even  physical 
character  of  a  people,  with  its  influences  on  domestic  life  and  in- 
dividual deportment.  A  good  document  upon  this  subject  would 
be  the  history  of  Paris  society  and  of  French,  that  is,  Parisian, 
literature  from  the  commencement  of  the  latter  half  of  the  reign 
of  Louis  XIY.  to  that  of  Bonaparte,  compared  with  the  preceding 
philosophy  and  poetry  even  of  Frenchmen  themselves. 

The  second  form,  or  more  properly,  perhaps,  another  distinct 
cause,  of  this  diseased  disposition  is  matter  of  exultation  to  the 
philanthropist  and  philosopher,  and  of  regret  to  the  poet,  the 
painter,  and  the  statuary  alone,  and  to  them  only  as  poets,  painters, 
and  statuaries  ; — namely,  the  security,  the  comparative  equability, 
and  ever  increasing  sameness  of  human  life.  Men  are  now  so 
seldom  thrown  into  wild  circumstances,  and  violences  of  excite- 
ment, that  the  language  of  such  states,  the  laws  of  association  of 
feeling  with  thought,  the  starts  and  strange  far-flights  of  the 
assimilative  power  on  the  slightest  and  least  obvious  likeness 
presented  by  thoughts,  words,  or  objects, — these  are  all  judged 
of  by  authority,  not  by  actual  experience, — by  what  men  have 

*  Confestim  Peneos  adest,  viridantia  Tempe, 

Tempee,  quae  cingunt  sylvae  superimpendentes. 

EpUh.  Pel  et  Th.  286. 


AND   PUBLIC   TASTE.  46 

been  accustomed  to  regard   as  symbols  of  these  states,  and  not 
the  natural  symbols,  or  self-manifestations  of  them. 

Even  so  it  is  in  the  language  of  man,  and  in  that  of  nature. 
The  sound  sun,  or  the  figures  s,  %i,  n,  are  purely  arbitrary  modes 
of  recalling  the  object,  and  for  visual  mere  objects  they  are  not 
only  sufficient,  but  have  infinite  advantages  from  their  very 
nothingness  per  se.  But  the  language  of  nature  is  a  subordinate 
Logos,  that  was  in  the  beginning,  and  was  with  the  thing  it 
represented,  and  was  the  thing  it  represented. 

Now  the  language  of  Shakspeare,  in  his  Lear  for  instance,  is  a 
something  intermediate  between  these  two  ;  or  rather  it  is  the 
former  blended  with  the  latter, — the  arbitrary,  not  merely  recall- 
ing the  cold  notion  of  the  thing,  but  expressing  the  reality  of  it, 
and,  as  arbitrary  language  is  an  heirloom  of  the  human  race, 
being  itself  a  part  of  that  which  it  manifests.  "What  shall  I  de- 
duce from  the  preceding  positions  ?  Even  this, — the  appropriate, 
the  never  to  be  too  much  valued  advantage  of  the  theatre,  if  only 
the  actors  were  what  we  know  they  have  been, — a  delightful,  yet 
most  effectual  remedy  for  this  dead  palsy  of  the  public  mind. 
What  would  appear  mad  or  ludicrous  in  a  book,  when  presented 
to  the  senses  under  the  form  of  reality,  and  with  the  truth  of  na- 
ture, supplies,  a  species  of  actual  experience.  This  is  indeed  the 
special  privilege  of  a  great  actor  over  a  great  poet.  No  part  was 
ever  played  in  perfection,  but  nature  justified  herself  in  the  hearts 
of  all  her  children,  in  what  state  soever  they  were,  short  of  abso- 
lute moral  exhaustion,  or  downright  stupidity.  There  is  no  time 
given  to  ask  questions,  or  to  pass  judgments  ;  we  are  taken  by 
storm,  and,  though  in  the  histrionic  art  many  a  clumsy  counter- 
feit, by  caricature  of  one  or  two  features,  may  gain  applause  as  a 
fine  likeness,  yet  never  was  the  very  thing  rejected  as  a  counter" 
feit.  0  !  when  I  think  of  the  inexhaustible  mine  of  virgin  treas- 
ure in  our  Shakspeare,  that  I  have  been  almost  daily  reading  him 
since  I  was  ten  years  old, — that  the  thirty  intervening  years  have 
been  unintermittingly  and  not  fruitlessly  employed  in  the  study 
of  the  Greek,  Latin,  English,  Italian,  Spanish  and  German  belie 
lettrists,  and  the  last  fifteen  years  in  addition,  far  more  intensely 
in  the  analysis  of  the  laws  of  life  and  reason  as  they  exist  in  man, 
— and  that  upon  every  step  I  have  made  forward  in  taste,  in  ac- 
quisition of  facts  from  history  or  my  own  observation,  and  in 
knowledge  of  the  different  laws  of  being  and  their  apparent  ex« 


46  SHAKSPEARE,   A  POET  GENERALLY. 

ceptions,  from  accidental  collision  of  disturbing  forces, — thai  at 
every  new  accession  of  information,  after  every  successful  exercise 
of  meditation,  and  every  fresh  presentation  of  experience,  I  have 
unfailingly  discovered  a  proportionate  increase  of  wisdom  and  in- 
tuition in  Shakspeare  ;— when  I  know  this,  and  know  too,  that 
by  a  conceivable  and  possible,  though  hardly  to  be  expected,  ar- 
rangement of  the  British  theatres,  not  all,  indeed,  but  a  large,  a 
very  large,  proportion  of  this  indefinite  all — (round  which  no 
comprehension  has  yet  drawn  the  line  of  circumscription,  so  as  to 
say  to  itself,  '  I  have  seen  the  whole')— might  be  sent  into  the 
heads  and  hearts— into  the  very  souls  of  the  mass  of  mankind,  to 
whom,  except  by  this  living  comment  and  interpretation,  it  must 
remain  forever  a  sealed  volume,  a  deep  well  without  a  wheel  or 
a  windlass  ;— it  seems  to  me  a  pardonable  enthusiasm  to  steal 
away  from  sober  likelihood,  and  share  in  so  rich  a  feast  in  the 
fairy  world  of  possibility  !  Yet  even  in  the  grave  cheerfulness  of 
a  circumspect  hope,  much,  very  much,  might  be  done  ;  enough, 
assuredly,  to  furnish  a  kind  and  strenuous  nature  with  ample 
motives  for  the  attempt  to  effect  what  may  be  effected. 

SHAKSPEARE,  A  POET  GENERALLY. 

Clothed  in  radiant  armor,  and  authorized  by  titles  sure  and 
manifold,  as  a  poet,  Shakspeare  came  forward  to  demand  the 
throne  of  fame,  as  the  dramatic  poet  of  England.  His  excellen 
ces  compelled  even  his  contemporaries  to  seat  him  on  that  throne, 
although  there  were  giants  in  those  days  contending  for  the  same 
honor.°  Hereafter  I  would  fain  endeavor  to  make  out  the  title  of 
the  English  drama  as  created  by,  and  existing  in,  Shakspeare, 
and  its  right  to  the  supremacy  of  dramatic  excellence.  But  he 
had  shown  himself  a  poet,  previously  to  his  appearance  as  a  dra- 
matic poet ;  and  had  no  Lear,  no  Othello,  no  Henry  IV.,  no 
Twelfth  Night  ever  appeared,  we  must  have  admitted  that 
Shakspeare  possessed  the  chief,  if  not  every,  requisite  of  a  poet,— 
deep  feeling  and  exquisite  sense  of  beauty,  both  as  exhibited  to 
the  eye  in  the  combinations  of  form,  and  to  the  ear  in  sweet  and 
appropriate  melody  ;  that  these  feelings  were  under  the  command 
of  his  own  will  ;  that  in  his  very  first  productions  he  projected 
his  mind  out  of  his  own  particular  being,  and  felt,  and  made 


SHAKSPEARE,    A   POET   GENERALLY.  47 

others  feel,  on  subjects  no  way  connected  with  himself,  except  by 
force  of  contemplation  and  that  sublime  faculty  by  which  a  great 
mind  becomes  that,  on  which  it  meditates.  To  this  must  be 
added  that  affectionate  love  of  nature  and  natural  objects,  with- 
out which  no  man  could  have  observed  so  steadily,  or  painted  so 
truly  and  passionately,  the  very  minutest  beauties  of  the  externa) 
world  : — 

And  when  thou  Last  on  foot  the  purblind  hare, 
Mark  the  poor  wretch ;  to  overshoot  his  troubles, 
How  he  outruns  the  wind,  and  with  what  care, 
He  cranks  and  crosses  with  a  thousand  doubles ; 
The  many  musits  through  the  which  he  goes 
Are  like  a  labyrinth  to  amaze  his  foes. 

Sometimes  he  runs  among  the  flock  of  sheep, 
To  make  the  cunning  hounds  mistake  their  smell ; 
And  sometime  where  earth-delving  conies  keep, 
To  stop  the  loud  pursuers  in  their  yell ; 
And  sometime  sorteth  with  a  herd  of  deer : 
Danger  deviseth  shifts,  wit  waits  on  fear. 

For  there  his  smell  with  others'  being  mingled, 
The  hot  scent-snuffing  hounds  are  driven  to  doubt, 
Ceasing  their  clamorous  cry,  till  they  have  singled, 
"With  much  ado,  the  cold  fault  cleanly  out, 
Then  do  they  spend  their  mouths  ;  echo  replies, 
As  if  another  chase  were  in  the  skies. 

By  this  poor  Wat  far  off,  upon  a  hill, 
Stands  on  his  hinder  legs  with  listening  ear, 
To  hearken  if  his  foes  pursue  him  still : 
Anon  their  loud  alarums  he  doth  hear, 
And  now  his  grief  may  be  compared  well 
To  one  sore-sick,  that  hears  the  passing  bell. 

Then  shalt  thou  see  the  dew-bedabbled  wretch 
Turn,  and  return,  indenting  with  the  way  : 
Each  envious  brier  his  weary  legs  doth  scratch, 
Each  shadow  makes  him  stop,  each  murmur  stay. 
For  misery  is  trodden  on  by  many, 
And  being  low,  never  relieved  by  any. 

Venus  and  Adonis. 
And  the  preceding  description  : — 

But  lo  !  from  forth  a  copse  that  neighbors  by, 
A  breeding  jennet,  lusty,  young  and  proud,  (fee. 

is  much  more  admirable,  but  in  parts  less  fitted  for  quotation. 


48  SHAKSPEARE,    A   POET   GENERALLY. 

Moreover  Shakspeare  had  shown  that  he  possessed  fancy,  con 
sidered  as  the  faculty  of  bringing  together  images  dissimilar  in 
the  main  by  some  one  point  or  more  of  likeness,  as  in  such  a  pas- 
sage as  this  : — 

Full  gently  now  she  takes  him  by  the  hand, 

A  lily  prisoned  in  a  jail  of  snosv, 

Or  ivory  in  an  alabaster  band : 

So  white  a  friend  ingirts  so  white  a  foe ! — lb. 

And  still  mounting  the  intellectual  ladder,  he  had  as  unequivo 
vjally  proved  the  indwelling  in  his  mind  of  imagination,  or  the 
power  by  which  one  image  or  feeling  is  made  to  modify  many 
others,  and  by  a  sort  of  fusion  to  force  many  into  one ; — that 
which  afterwards  showed  itself  in  such  might  and  energy  in 
Lear,  where  the  deep  anguish  of.  a  father  spreads  the  feeling  of 
ingratitude  and  cruelty  over  the  very  elements  of  heaven ; — and 
which,  combining  many  circumstances  into  one  moment  of  con- 
sciousness, tends  to  produce  that  ultimate  end  of  all  human 
thought  and  human  feeling,  unity,  and  thereby  the  reduction  of 
the  spirit  to  its  principle  and  fountain,  who  is  alone  truly  one. 
Various  are  the  workings  of  this  the  greatest  faculty  of  the  hu- 
man mind,  both  passionate  and  tranquil.  In  its  tranquil  and 
purely  pleasurable  operation,  it  acts  chiefly  by  creating  out  of 
many  things,  as  they  would  have  appeared  in  the  description  of 
an  ordinary  mind,  detailed  in  unimpassioned  succession,  a  one- 
ness, even  as  nature,  the  greatest  of  poets,  acts  upon  us,  when  we 
open  our  eyes  upon  an  extended  prospect.  Thus  the  flight  of 
Adonis  in  the  dusk  of  the  evening  : — 

Look  !  how  a  bright  star  shooteth  from  the  sky  ; 
So  glides  he  in  the  night  from  Yenus'  eye ! 

How  many  images  and  feelings  are  here  brought  together 
without  effort  and  without  discord,  in  the  beauty  of  Adonis,  the 
rapidity  of  his  flight,  the  yearning,  yet  hopelessness,  of  the  enam- 
ored gazer,  while  a  shadowy  ideal  character  is  thrown  over  the 
whole  !  Or  this  power  acts  by  impressing  the  stamp  of  humani- 
ty, and  of  human  feelings,  on  inanimate  or  mere  natural  objects  :-— 

Lo !  here  the  gentle  lark,  weary  of  re*st, 
From  his  moist  cabinet  mounts  up  on  high, 
And  wakes  the  morning,  from  whose  silver  breast 
The  cun  ariseth  in  his  majesty. 


SHAKSPEARE,    A   POET   GENERALLY.  49 

Who  doth  the  world  so  gloriously  behold, 
The  cedar-tops  and  hills  seem  burnish'd  gold. 

Or  again,  it  acts  by  so  carrying  on  the  eye  of  the  reader  as  tc 
make  him  almost  lose  the  consciousness  of  words, — to  make 
him  see  every  thing  flashed,  as  Wordsworth  has  grandly  and  ap 
propriately  said, — 

Flanked  upon  that  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude ; — 

and  this  without  exciting  any  painful  or  laborious  attention, 
without  any  anatomy  of  description  (a  fault  not  uncommon  in 
descriptive  poetry) — but  with  the  sweetness  and  easy  movement 
of  nature.  This  energy  is  an  absolute  essential  of  poetry,  and 
of  itself  would  constitute  a  poet,  though  not  one  of  the  highest 
class  ; — it  is,  however,  a  most  hopeful  symptom,  and  the  Venus 
and  Adonis  is  one  continued  specimen  of  it. 

In  this  beautiful  poem  there  is  an  endless  activity  of  thought 
in  all  the  possible  associations  of  thought  with  thought,  thought 
with  feeling,  or  with  words,  of  feelings  with  feelings,  and  of 
words  with  words. 

Even  as  the  sun,  with  purple-color'd  face, 
Had  ta'en  his  last  leave  of  the  weeping  morn, 
Rose-cheek'd  Adonis  hied  him  to  the  chase : 
Hunting  he  loved,  but  love  he  laughed  to  scorn. 
Siek-thoughted  Venus  makes  amain  unto  him, 
And  like  a  bold-faeed  suitor  'gins  to  woo  him. 

Remark  the  humanizing  imagery  and  circumstances  of  the  first 
two  lines,  and  the  activity  of  thought  in  the  play  of  words  in  the 
fourth  line.  The  whole  stanza  presents  at  once  the  time,  the  ap 
pearance  of  the  morning,  and  the  two  persons  distinctly  charac- 
terized, and  in  six  simple  verses  puts  the  reader  in  possession  of 
the  whole  argument  of  the  poem. 

Over  one  arm  the  lusty  courser's  rein, 
Under  the  other  was  the  tender  boy, 
Who  blush'd  and  pouted  in  a  dull  disdain, 
With  leaden  appetite,  unapt  to  toy, 
She  red  and  hot,  as  coals  of  glowing  fire, 
He  red  for  shame,  but  frosty  to  desire  : — ■ 

This  stanza  and  the  two  following  afford  good  instances  of  that 
vol.  iv.  0 


50  SHAKSPEARE,    A   POET   GENERALLY. 

poetic  power,  which  I  mentioned  above,  of  making  every  thing 
present  to  the  imagination — both  the  forms,  and  the  passions 
which  modify  those  forms,  either  actually,  as  in  the  representa- 
tions of  love,  or  anger,  or  other  human  affections  ;  or  imagina- 
tively, by  the  different  manner  in  which  inanimate  objects,  or  ob- 
jects unimpassioned  themselves,  are  caused  to  be  seen  by  the 
mind  in  moments  of  strong  excitement,  and  according  to  the  kind 
of  the  excitement, — whether  of  jealousy,  or  rage,  or  love,  in  the 
only  appropriate  sense  of  the  word,  or  of  the  lower  impulses  of 
our  nature,  or  finally  of  the  poetic  feeling  itself.  It  is,  perhaps, 
chiefly  in.  the  power  of  producing  and  reproducing  the  latter  that 
the  poet  stands  distinct. 

The  subject  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  is  unpleasing ;  but  the 
poem  itself  is  for  that  very  reason  the  more  illustrative  of  Shaks- 
peare.  There  are  men  who  can  write  passages  of  deepest  pathos 
and  even  sublimity,  on  circumstances  personal  to  themselves,  and 
stimulative  of  their  own  passions  ;  but  they  are  not,  therefore,  on 
this  account  poets.  Read  that  magnificent  burst  of  woman's  pa- 
triotism and  exultation,  Deborah's  song  of  victory ;  it  is  glorious, 
but  nature  is  the  poet  there.  It  is  quite  another  matter  to  be- 
come all  things  and  yet  remain  the  same, — to  make  the  change- 
ful god  be  felt  in  the  river,  the  lion  and  the  flame  ; — this  it  is, 
that  is  the  true  imagination.  Shakspeare  writes  in  this  poem, 
as  if  he  were  of  another  planet,  charming  you  to  gaze  on  the 
movements  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  as  you  would  on  the  twinkling 
dances  of  two  vernal  butterflies. 

Finally,  in  this  poem  and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  Shakspeare  gave 
ample  proof  of  his  possession  of  a  most  profound,  energetic,  and 
philosophical  mind,  without  which  he  might  have  pleased,  but 
could  not  have  been  a  great  dramatic  poet.  Chance  and  the 
necessity  of  his  genius  combined  to  lead  him  to  the  drama  his 
proper  province  :  in  his  conquest  of  which  we  should  consider 
both  the  difficulties  which  opposed  him,  and  the  advantages  by 
which  he  was  assisted. 


SHAKSPEARE  S    JUDGMENT    EQUAL    TO    HIS    GENIUS. 

Thus  then  Shakspeare  appears,  from  his  Venus  and  Adonis  and 
Rape  of  Lucrece  alone,  apart  from  all  his  great  works,  to  have 
possessed  all  the  conditions  of  the  true  poet.     Let  me  now  pre- 


A   POET   GENERALLY.  51 

ceed  to  destroy,  as  far  as  may  be  in  my  power,  the  popular  notion 
that  he  was  a  great  dramatist  by  mere  instinct,  that  he  grew  im- 
mortal in  his  own  despite,  and  sank  below  men  of  second  or 
third-rate  power,  when  he  attempted  aught  beside  the  drama — 
even  as  bees  construct  their  cells  and  manufacture  their  honey  to 
admirable  perfection  ;  but  would  in  vain  attempt  to  build  a  nest. 
Now  this  mode  of  reconciling  a  compelled  sense  of  inferiority  with 
a  feeling  of  pride,  began  in  a  few  pedants,  who  having  read  that 
Sophocles  was  the  great  model  of  tragedy,  and  Aristotle  the  in- 
fallible dictator  of  its  rules,  and  finding  that  the  Lear,  Hamlet, 
Othello,  and  other  master-pieces  were  neither  in  imitation  of 
Sophocles,  nor  in  obedience  to  Aristotle, — and  not  having  (with 
one  or  two  exceptions)  the  courage  to  affirm,  that  the  delight 
which  their  country  received  from  generation  to  generation,  in  de- 
fiance of  the  alterations  of  circumstances  and  habits,  was  wholly 
groundless, — took  upon  them,  as  a  happy  medium  and  refuge,  to 
talk  of  Shakspeare  as  a  sort  of  beautiful  lasits  naturce,  a  delight- 
ful monster, — wild,  indeed,  and  without  taste  or  judgment,  but 
like  the  inspired  idiots  so  much  venerated  in  the  East,  uttering, 
amid  the  strangest  follies,  the  sublimest  truths.  In  nine  places 
out  of  ten  in  which  I  find  his  awful  name  mentioned,  it  is  with 
some  epithet  of  "wild,"  "  irregular,"  "pure  child  of  nature,"  &e. 
If  all  this  be  true,  we  must  submit  to  it  ;  though  to  a  thinking 
mind  it  can  not  but  be  painful  to  find  any  excellence,  merely  hu- 
man, thrown  out  of  all  human  analogy,  and  thereby  leaving  us 
neither  rules  for  imitation,  nor  motives  to  imitate  ; — but  if  false, 
it  is  a  dangerous  falsehood  ; — for  it  affords  a  refuge  to  secret  self- 
conceit, — enables  a  vain  man  at  once  to  escape  his  reader's  indig- 
nation by  general  swoln  panegyrics,  and  merely  by  his  ipse  dixit 
to  treat,  as  contemptible,  what  he  has  not  intellect  enough  to 
comprehend,  or  soul  to  feel,  without  assigning  any  reason,  or  re- 
ferring his  opinion  to  any  demonstrative  principle  ;  thus  leaving 
Shakspeare  as  a  sort  of  grand  Lama,  adored  indeed,  and  his  very 
excrements  prized  as  relics,  but  with  no  authority  or  real  influ- 
ence. I  grieve  that  every  late  voluminous  edition  of  his  works 
would  enable  me  to  substantiate  tne  present  charge  with  a  vari- 
ety of  facts,  one  tenth  of  which  would  of  themselves  exhaust  the 
time  allotted  to  me.  Every  critic,  who  has  or  has  not  made  a 
collection  of  black-letter  books — in  itself  a  useful  and  respectable 
amusement, — puts  on  the  seven-league  boots  of  self-opinion,  and 


52  SHAKSPEARE,    A   POET   GENERALLY. 

strides  at  once  from  an  illustrator  into  a  supreme  judge,  and 
blind  and  deaf,  fills  his  three-ounce  phial  at  the  waters  of  Niagara  ; 
aud  determines  positively  the  greatness  of  the  cataract  to  be 
neither  more  nor  less  than  his  three-ounce  phial  has  been  able  to 
receive. 

I  think  this  a  very  serious  subject.  It  is  my  earnest  desire — 
my  passionate  endeavor, — to  enforce  at  various  times,  and  by  va- 
rious arguments  and  instances,  the  close  and  reciprocal  connection 
of  just  taste  with  pure  morality.  Without  that  acquaintance 
with  the  heart  of  man,  or  that  docility  and  childlike  gladness  to 
be  made  acquainted  with  it,  which  those  only  can  have,  who  dare 
look  at  their  own  hearts — and  that  with  a  steadiness  which  re- 
ligion only  has  the  power  of  reconciling  with  sincere  humility  ; 
— without  this,  and  the  modesty  produced  by  it,  I  am  deeply  con- 
vinced that  no  man,  however  wide  his  erudition,  however  patient 
his  antiquarian  researches,  can  possibly  understand,  or  be  worthy 
of  understanding,  the  writings  of  Shakspeare. 

Assuredly  that  criticism  of  Shakspeare  will  alone  be  genial 
which  is  reverential.  The  Englishman,  who,  without  rever- 
ence, a  proud  and  affectionate  reverence,  can  utter  the  name 
of  William  Shakspeare,  stands  disqualified  for  the  office  of  critic. 
He  wants  one  at  least  of  the  very  senses,  the  language  of  which 
he  is  to  employ,  and  will  discourse  at  best,  but  as  a  blind  man, 
while  the  whole  harmonious  creation  of  light  and  shade  with  all 
its  subtle  interchange  of  deepening  and  dissolving  colors  rises  in 
silence  to  the  silent  fiat  of  the  uprising  Apollo.  However  inferior 
in  ability  I  may  be  to  some  who  have  followed  me,  I  own  I  am 
proud  that  I  was  the  first  in  time  who  publicly  demonstrated 
to  the  full  extent  of  the  position,  that  the  supposed  irregularity 
and  extravagances  of  Shakspeare  were  the  mere  dreams  of  a 
pedantry  that  arraigned  the  eagle  because  it  had  not  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  swan.  In  all  the  successive  courses  of  lectures  de- 
livered by  me,  since  my  first  attempt  at  the  Royal  Institution,  it 
has  been,  and  it  still  remains,  my  object,  to  prove  that  in  all 
points  from  the  most  important  to  the  most  minute,  the  judgment 
of  Shakspeare  is  commensurate  with  his  genius — nay,  that  his 
genius  reveals  itself  in  his  judgment,  as  in  its  most  exalted  form. 
And  the  more  gladly  do  I  recur  to  this  subject  from  the  clear  con- 
viction, that  to  judge  aright,  and  with  distinct  consciousness  of 
the  grounds  of  our  judgment,  concerning  the  works  of  Shakspeare, 


A  POET   GENERALLY.  58 

implies  the  power  and  the  means  of  judging  rightly  of  all  other 
works  of  intellect,  those  of  abstract  science  alone  excepted. 

It  is  a  painful  truth  that  not  only  individuals,  but  even  whole 
nations,  are  ofttimes  so  enslaved  to  the  habits  of  their  education 
and  immediate  circumstances,  as  not  to  judge  disinterestedly  even 
on  those  subjects,  the  very  pleasure  arising  from  which  consists 
in  its  disinterestedness,  namely,  on  subjects  of  taste  and  polite  lit- 
erature. Instead  of  deciding  concerning  their  own  modes  and 
customs  by  any  rule  of  reason,  nothing  appears  rational,  becom- 
ing, or  beautiful  to  them,  but  what  coincides  with  the  peculiari- 
ties of  their  education.  In  this  narrow  circle,  individuals  may 
attain  to  exquisite  discrimination,  as  the  French  critics  have  done 
in  their  own  literature  ;  but  a  true  critic  can  no  more  be  such 
without  placing  himself  on  some  central  point,  from  which  he 
may  command  the  whole,  that  is,  some  general  rule,  which, 
founded  in  reason,  or  the  faculties  common  to  all  men,  riust. 
therefore  apply  to  each — than  an  astronomer  can  explain  the 
movements  of  the  solar  system  without  taking  his  stand  in  the 
sun.  And  let  me  remark,  that  this  will  not  tend  to  produce  des- 
potism, but,  on  the  contrary,  true  tolerance,  in. the  critic.  He 
will,  indeed,  require,  as  the  spirit  and  substance  of  a  work,  some- 
thing true  in  human  nature  itself,  and  independent  of  all  circum- 
stances ;  but  in  the  mode  of  applying  it,  he  will  estimate  genius 
and  judgment  according  to  the  felicity  with  which  the  imperish- 
able soul  of  intellect,  shall  have  adapted  itself  to  the  age,  the 
place,  and  the  existing  manners.  The  error  he  will  expose,  lies 
in  reversing  this,  and  holding  up  the  mere  circumstances  as  per- 
petual to  the  utter  neglect  of  the  power  which  can  alone  animate 
them.  For  art  can  not  exist  without,  or  apart  from,  nature  ;  and 
what  has  man  of  his  own  to  give  to  his  fellow-man,  but  his  own 
thoughts  and  feelings,  and  his  observations,  so  far  as  they  are 
modified  by  his  own  thoughts  or  feelings  ? 

Let  me,  then,  once  more  submit  this  question  to  minds  eman- 
cipated alike  from  national,  or  party,  or  sectarian  prejudice  : — 
Are  the  plays  of  Shakspeare  works  of  rude  uncultivated  genius, 
in  which  the  splendor  of  the  parts  compensates,  if  aught  can  com- 
pensate, for  the  barbarous  shapelessness  and  irregularity  of  the 
whole  ?  Or  is  the  form  equally  admirable  with  the  matter,  and 
the  judgment  of  the  great  poet,  not  less  deserving  our  wonder  than 
his  genius  ? — Or,  again,  to  repeat  the  question  in  other  words  '— 


54  SHAKSPEARE,   A  POET  GENERALLY. 

Is  Shakspeaie  a  great  dramatic  poet  on  account  only  of  those 
beauties  and  excellences  which  he  possesses  in  common  with  the 
ancients,  but  with  diminished  claims  to  our  love  and  honor  to  the 
full  extent  of  his  differences  from  them  ? — Or  are  these  very  dif- 
ferences additional  proofs  of  poetic  wisdom,  at  once  results  and 
symbols  of  living  power  as  contrasted  with  lifeless  mechanism — 
of  free  and  rival  originality  as  contra-distinguished  from  servile 
imitation,  or,  more  accurately,  a  blind  copying  of  effects,  instead 
of  a  true  imitation  of  the  essential  principles  ? — Imagine  not  that 
I  am  about  to  oppose  genius  to  rules.  No  !  the  comparative 
value  of  these  rules  is  the  very  cause  to  be  tried.  The  spirit  of 
poetry,  like  all  other  living  powers,  must  of  necessity  circum- 
scribe itself  by  rules,  were  it  only  to  unite  power  with  beauty. 
It  must  embody  in  order  to  reveal  itself ;  but  a  living  body  is  of 
necessity  an  organized  one ;  and  what  is  organization  but  the 
connection  of  parts  in  and  for  a  whole,  so  that  each  part  is  at 
once  end  and  means  ? — This  is  no  discovery  of  criticism  ; — it  is  a 
necessity  of  the  human  mind ;  and  all  nations  have  felt  and 
obeyed  it,  in  the  invention  of  metre,  and  measured  sounds,  as  the 
vehicle  and  involucrum  of  poetry — itself  a  fellow-growth  from 
the  same  life — even  as  the  bark  is  to  the  tree ! 

(g)  No  work  of  true  genius  dares  want  its  appropriate  form, 
neither  indeed  is  there  any  danger  of  this.  As  it  must  not,  so 
genius  can  not,  be  lawless  ;  for  it  is  even  this  that  constitutes  it 
genius — the  power  of  acting  creatively  under  laws  of  its  own 
origination.  How  then  comes  it  that  not  only  single  Zoili,  but 
whole  nations  have  combined  in  unhesitating  condemnation  of 
our  great  dramatist,  as  a  sort  of  African  nature,  rich  in  beautiful 
monsters — as  a  wild  heath  where  islands  of  fertility  look  the 
greener  from  the  surrounding  waste,  where  the  loveliest  plants 
now  shine  out  among  unsightly  weeds,  and  now  are  choked  by 
their  parasitic  growth,  so  intertwined  that  we  can  not  disentangle 
the  weed  without  snapping  the  flower  ? — In  this  statement  I  have 
had  no  reference  to  the  vulgar  abuse  of  Voltaire,^  save  as  far  as 

*  Take  a  slight  specimen  of  it. 

Je  suis  bien  loin  assuvemeot  de  justifier  en  tout  la  tragedie  d'Hamlet : 
c'est  une  piece  grossiere  et  barbare,  qui  ne  serait  pas  supporter  par  la  plus 
vile  populace  de  la  France  et  de  Vltalie.  Hamlet  y  devient  fou  au  second 
acte,  et  sa  maitresse  fole  au  troisieme;  le  prince  tue  le  pere  de  sa  mai- 
tresse,  feignant  de  tucr  un  rat,  et  l'heroine  se  jette  dans  la  riviere.  On  fait 
6a  fosse  sut  le  theatre  ;  des  fossoyeurs  disent  des  quolibets  dignes  d'eux,  en 


A   POET   GENERALLY.  C5 

his  charges  are  coincident  with  the  decisions  of  Shakspeare's  own 
commentators  and  (so  they  would  tell  you)  almost  idolatrous  ad- 
mirers. The  true  ground  of  the  mistake  lies  in  the  confounding 
mechanical  regularity  with  organic  form.  The  form  is  mechanic, 
when  on  any  given  material  we  impress  a  pre-determined  form, 
not  necessarily  arising  out  of  the  properties  of  the  material  ; — ag 
when  to  a  mass  of  wet  clay  we  give  whatever  shape  we  wish  it 
to  retain  when  hardened.  The  organic  form,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  innate  ;  it  shapes,  as  it  develops,  itself  from  within,  and  the 
fulness  of  its  development  is  one  and  the  same  with  the  perfec- 
tion of  its  outward  form.  Such  as  the  life  is,  such  is  the  form. 
Nature,  the  prime  genial  artist,  inexhaustible  in  diverse  powers, 
is  equally  inexhaustible  in  forms ; — each  exterior  is  the  physiog- 
nomy of  the  being  within — its  true  image  reflected  and  thrown 
out  from  the  concave  mirror  ; — and  even  such  is  the  appropriate 
excellence  of  her  chosen  poet,  of  our  own  Shakspeare — himself  a 
nature  humanized,  a  genial  understanding  directing  self-con- 
sciously a  power  and  an  implicit  wisdom  deeper  even  than  our 
consciousness. 

I  greatly  dislike  beauties  and  selections  in  general ;  but  as 
proof  positive  of  his  unrivalled  excellence,  I  should  like  to  try 
Shakspeare  by  this  criterion.  Make  out  your  amplest  catalogue 
of  all  the  human  faculties,  as  reason  or  the  moral  law,  the  will, 
the  feeling  of  the  coincidence  of  the  two  (a  feeling  sui  generis,  et 
demo?istratio  demonstrationum)  called  the  conscience,  the  under- 
standing or  prudence,  wit,  fancy,  imagination,  judgment — and 
then  of  the  objects  on  which  these  are  to  be  employed,  as  the 
beauties,  the  terrors,  and  the  seeming  caprices  of  nature,  the  real- 
ities and  the  capabilities,  that  is,  the  actual  and  the  ideal,  of  the 
human  mind,  conceived  as  an  individual  or  as  a  social  being,  as 
in  innocence  or  in  guilt,  in  a  play-paradise,  or  in  a  war-field  of 
temptation  ; — and  then  compare  with  Shakspeare  under  each  of 
these  heads  all  or  any  of  the  writers  in  prose  and  verse  that  have 

tenant  dans  leurs  mains  des  tetes  de  raorts ;  le  prince  Hamlet  repond  a  leurs 
grossieretes  abominables  par  des  folies  nov  moins  degoutantes.  Pendant  co 
temps-la,  un  des  acteurs  fait  la  conquete  de  la  Pologne.  Hamlet,  sa  mere, 
et  son  beau-pere  boivent  ensemble  sur  le  theatre ;  on  chante  d  table,  on  s'y 
qucrelle,  on  se  bat,  on  se  tue :  on  croirait  que  cet  ouvrage  est  le  fruit  de 
V 'imagination  dun  sauvage  ivre.     Dissertation  before  Semiramis. 

This  is  not,  perhaps,  very  like  Hamlet ;  but  nothing  can  be  more  HTw 
Voltaire.— Ed. 


56  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

ever  lived  !  Who,  that  is  competent  to  judge,  doubts  the  result  ? 
— And  ask  your  own  hearts — ask  your  own  common-sense — to 
conceive  the  possibility  of  this  man  being — I  say  not,  the  drunken 
savage  of  that  wretched  socialist,  whom  Frenchmen,  to  their 
shame,  have  honored  before  their  elder  and  better  worthies — but 
the  anomalous,  the  wild,  the  irregular,  genius  of  our  daily  criti- 
cism !  "What !  are  we  to  have  miracles  in  sport  ? — Or,  I  speak 
reverently,  does  God  choose  idiots  by  whom  to  convey  divine 
truths  to  man  ?  (h) 

RECAPITULATION  AND  SUMMARY 

OF    THE    CHARACTERISTICS    OF   SHAKSPEARE's    DRAMAS.* 

In  lectures,  of  which  amusement  forms  a  large  part  of  the 
object,  there  are  some  peculiar  difficulties.  The  architect  places 
his  foundation  out  of  sight,  and  the  musician  tunes  his  instrument 
before  he  makes  his  appearance  ;  but  the  lecturer  has  to  try  his 
chords  in  the  presence  of  the  assembly  ;  an  operation  not  likely, 
indeed,  to  produce  much  pleasure,  but  yet  indispensably  necessary 
to  a  right  understanding  of  the  subject  to  be  developed. 

Poetry  in  essence  is  as  familiar  to  barbarous  as  to  civilized 
nations.  The  Laplander  and  the  savage  Indian  are  cheered  by 
it  as  well  as  the  inhabitants  of  London  and  Paris  ; — its  spirit 
takes  up  and  incorporates  surrounding  materials,  as  a  plant 
clothes  itself  with  soil  and  climate,  whilst  it  exhibits  the  work- 
ing of  a  vital  principle  within  independent  of  all  accidental  cir- 
cumstances. And  to  judge  with  fairness  of  an  author's  works, 
we  ought  to  distinguish  what  is  inAvard  and  essential  from  what 
is  outward  and  circumstantial.  It  is  essential  to  poetry  that  it 
be  simple,  and  appeal  to  the  elements  and  primary  laws  of  our 
nature  ;  that  it  be  sensuous,  and  by  its  imagery  elicit  truth  at  a 
flash  ;  that  it  be  impassioned,  and  be  able  to  move  our  feelings 
and  awaken  our  affections.  In  comparing  different  poets  with 
each  other,  we  should  inquire  which  have  brought  into  the  fullest 
play  our  imagination  and  our  reason,  or  have  created  the  greatest 
excitement  and  produced  the  completest  harmony.  If  Ave  con- 
sider great  exquisiteness  of  language  and  sweetness  of  metre 
alone,  it  is  impossible  10  deny  to  Pope  the  character  of  a  delight- 

*  For  the  most  part  communicated  by  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge. — Ed. 


SHAKSPEARE'S  DRAMAS.  57 

fnl  writer ;  but  whether  he  be  a  poet,  must  depend  upon  our 
definition  of  the  word  ;  and,  doubtless,  if  every  thing  that  pleases 
be  poetry,  Pope's  satires  and  epistles  must  be  poetry.  This,  I 
must  say,  that  poetry,  as  distinguished  from  other  modes  of  com- 
position, does  not  rest  in  metre,  and  that  it  is  not  poetry,  if  it 
make  no  appeal  to  our  passions  or  our  imagination.  One  char- 
acter belongs  to  all  true  poets,  that  they  write  from  a  principle 
within,  not  originating  in  any  thing  without ;  and  that  the  true 
poet's  work  in  its  form,  its  shapings,  and  its  modifications,  is 
distinguished  from  all  other  works  that  assume  to  belong  to  the 
class  of  poetry,  as  a  natural  from  an  artificial  flower,  or  as  the 
mimic  garden  of  a  child  from  an  enamelled  meadow;  In  the 
former  the  flowers  are  broken  from  their  stems  and  stuck  into 
the  ground  ;  they  are  beautiful  to  the  eye  and  fragrant  to  the 
sense,  but  their  colors  soon  fade,  and  their  odor  is  transient  as 
the  smile  of  the  planter  ; — while  the  meadow  may  be  visited 
again  and  again  with  reneAved  delight  ;  its  beauty  is  innate  in 
the  soil,  and  its  bloom  is  of  the  freshness  of  nature,   (i) 

The  next  ground  of  critical  judgment,  and  point  of  comparison, 
will  be  as  to  how  far  a  given  poet  has  been  influenced  by  acci- 
dental circumstances.  As  a  living  poet  must  surely  write,  not 
for  the  ages  past,  but  for  that  in  which  he  lives,  and  those  which 
are  to  follow,  it  is,  on  the  one  hand,  natural  that  he  should  not 
violate,  and  on  the  other,  necessary  that  he  should  not  depend 
on,  the  mere  manners  and  modes  of  his  day.  See  how  little 
does  Shakspeare  leave  us  to  regret  that  he  was  born  in  his  par- 
ticular age  !  The  great  rera  in  modern  times  was  what  is  called 
the  Restoration  of  Letters  ; — the  ages  preceding  it  are  called 
the  dark  ages  ;  but  it  would  be  more  wise,  perhaps,  to  call  them 
the  ages  in  which  we  were  in  the  dark.  It  is  usually  overlooked 
that  the  supposed  dark  period  was  not  universal,  but  partial  and 
successive,  or  alternate  ;  that  the  dark  age  of  England  was  not 
the  dark  age  of  Italy,  but  that  one  country  was  in  its  light  and 
vigor,  whilst  another  was  in  its  gloom  and  bondage.  But  no 
sooner  had  the  Reformation  sounded  through  Europe  like  the  blast 
of  an  archangel's  trumpet,  than  from  king  to  peasant  there  arose 
an  enthusiasm  for  knowledge  ;  the  discovery  of  a  manuscript 
became  the  subject  of  an  embassy  ;  Erasmus  read  by  moonlight, 
because  he  could  not  afford  a  torch,  and  begged  a  penny,  not  for 
the  love  of  charity,  but  for  the  love  of  learning.     The  three  great 

c* 


58  CHARACTERISTICS   OF 

points  of  attention  were  religion,  morals,  and  taste  ;  men  of  ge- 
nius as  well  as  men  of  learning-,  who  in  this  age  need  to  be  so 
widely  distinguished,  then  alike  became  copyists  of  the  ancients  ; 
and  this,  indeed,  was  the  only  way  by  which  the  taste  of  mankind 
could  be  improved,  or  their  understandings  informed.  Whilst 
Dante  imagined  himself  a  humble  follower  of  Virgil,  and  Ariosto 
of  Homer,  they  were  both  unconscious  of  that  greater  power 
working  within  them,  which  in  many  points  carried  them  beyond 
their  supposed  originals.  All  great  discoveries  bear  the  stamp  of 
the  age  in  which  they  are  made  ; — hence  we  perceive  the  effects 
of  the  purer  religion  of  the  moderns,  visible  for  the  most  part  in 
their  lives  ;  and  in  reading  their  works  we  should  not  content 
ourselves  with  the  mere  narratives  of  events  long  since  passed, 
but  should  learn  to  apply  their  maxims  and  conduct  to  our- 
selves. 

Having  intimated  that  times  and  manners  lend  their  form  and 
pressure  to  genius,  let  me  once  more  draw  a  slight  parallel  be- 
tween the  ancient  and  modern  stage,  the  stages  of  Greece  and 
of  England.  The  Greeks  were  polytheists  ;  their  religion  was 
local  ;  almost  the  only  object  of  all  their  knowledge,  art,  and 
taste,  was  their  gods  ;  and,  accordingly,  their  productions  were, 
if  the  expression  may  be  allowed,  statuesque,  whilst  those  of  the 
moderns  are  picturesque,  (j)  The  Greeks  reared  a  structure, 
which  in  its  parts,  and  as  a  whole,  filled  the  mind  with  the  calm 
and  elevated  impression  of  perfect  beauty,  and  symmetrical  pro- 
portion. The  moderns  also  produced  a  whole,  a  more  striking 
whole  ;  but  it  was  by  blending  materials  and  fusing  the  parts 
together.  And  as  the  Pantheon  is  to  York  Minster  or  Westmin- 
ster Abbey,  so  is  Sophocles  compared  with  Shakspeare  ;  (k)  in 
the  one  a  completeness,  a  satisfaction,  an  excellence,  on  which 
the  mind  rests  with  complacency  ;  in  the  other  a  multitude  of 
interlaced  materials,  great  and  little,  magnificent  and  mean,  ac- 
companied, indeed,  with  the  sense  of  a  falling  short  of  perfection, 
and  yet,  at  the  same  time,  so  promising  of  our  social  and  indi 
vidual  progression,  that  we  would  not,  if  we  could,  exchange  it 
for  that  repose  of  the  mind  which  dwells  on  the  forms  of  sym- 
metry in  the  acquiescent  admiration  of  grace.  This  general 
characteristic  of  the  ancient  and  modern  drama  might  be  illus- 
trated by  a  parallel  of  the  ancient  and  modern  music  ; — the  one 
consisting  of  melody  arising  from  a  succession  only  of  pleasing 


SHAKSPEARE'S   DRAMAS.  59 

bounds, — the  modern  embracing  harmony  also,  the  result  of  com  • 
bination  and  the  effect  of  a  whole.   (Z) 

I  have  said,  and  I  say  it  again,  that  great  as  was  the  genius 
of  Shakspeare,  his  judgment  was  at  least  equal  to  it.  Of  this 
any  one  will  be  convinced,  who  attentively  considers  those  points 
in  which  the  dramas  of  Greece  and  England  differ,  from  the  dis- 
similitude of  circumstances  by  which  each  was  modified  and  in- 
fluenced. The  Greek  stage  had  its  origin  in  the  ceremonies  of  a 
sacrifice,  such  as  of  the  goat  to  Bacchus,  whom  we  most  erro- 
neously regard  as  merely  the  jolly  god  of  wine  ; — for  among  the 
ancients  he  was  venerable,  as  the  symbol  of  that  power  which 
acts  without  our  consciousness  in  the  vital  energies  of  nature, — 
the  vinum  mundi, — as 'Apollo  was  that  of  the  conscious  agency 
of  our  intellectual  being,  (m)  The  heroes  of  old  under  the  in- 
fluences of  this  Bacchic  enthusiasm,  performed  more  than  hu- 
man actions  ; — hence  tales  of  the  favorite  champions  soon  passed, 
into  dialogue.  On  the  Greek  stage  the  chorus  was  always  before 
the  audience ;  the  curtain  was  never  dropped,  as  we  should  say  ; 
and  change  of  place  being  therefore,  in  general,  impossible,  the 
absurd  notion  of  condemning  it  merely  as  improbable  in  itself 
was  never  entertained  by  any  one.  If  we  can  believe  ourselves 
at  Thebes  in  one  act,  we  may  believe  ourselves  at  Athens  in  the 
next.  If  a  story  lasts  twenty-four  hours  or  twenty-four  years,  it 
is  equally  improbable.  There  seems  to  be  no  just  boundary 
but  what  the  feelings  prescribe.  But  on  the  Greek  stage  where 
the  same  persons  were  perpetually  before  the  audience,  great 
judgment  was  necessary  in  venturing  on  any  such  change.  The 
poets  never,  therefore,  attempted  to  impose  on  the  senses  by 
bringing  places  to  men,  but  they  did  bring  men  to  places,  as  in 
the  well-known  instance  in  the  Eumenides,  where  during  an 
evident  retirement  of  the  chorus  from  the  orchestra,  the  scene  is 
changed  to  Athens,  and  Orestes  is  first  introduced  in  the  temple 
of  Minerva,  and  the  chorus  of  Furies  come  in  afterwards  in  pur- 
suit of  him.* 

In  the  Greek  drama  there  were  no  formal  divisions  into  scenes 

*  JEsch.  Eumen.  v.  230-239.  Notandum  est,  scenam  jam  Athenas  trans- 
latam  sic  institui,  ut  prime--  Orestes  sohis  conspiciatur  in  templo  Miner vce 
supplex  ejus  simulacrum  venerans ;  paulo  post  avtem  eum  conseguantur 
Eumenides,  &c,  Schtitz's  note.  The  recessions  of  the  chorus  were  termed 
w.ravaardaeLc.     There  is  another  instance  in  the  Ajax,  v.  814. — Ed. 


CO  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

and  acts;  there  were  no  means,  therefore,  of  allowing  for  the 
necessary  lapse  of  time  between  one  part  of  the  dialogue  and  an- 
other, and  unity  of  time  in  a  strict  sense  was,  of  course,  impossi- 
ble. To  overcome  that  difficulty  of  accounting  for  time,  which 
is  effected  on  the  modern  stage  by  dropping  a  curtain,  the  judg- 
ment and  great  genius  of  the  ancients  supplied  music  and  meas- 
ured motion,  and  with  the  lyric  ode  filled  up  the  vacuity.  In 
the  story  of  the  Agamemnon  of  JEschylus,  the  capture  of  Troy 
n  supposed  to  be  announced  by  a  fire  lighted  on  the  Asiatic  shore, 
and  the  transmission  of  the  signal  by  successive  beacons  to  My- 
cenae. The  signal  is  first  seen  at  the  21st  line,  and  the  herald 
from  Troy  itself  enters  at  the  486th,  and  Agamemnon  himself 
at  the7  83d  line.  But  the  practical  absurdity  of  this  was  not 
felt  by  the  audience,  who,  in  imagination,  stretched  minutes  into 
hours,  while  they  listened  to  the  lofty  narrative  odes  of  the  cho- 
rus which  almost  entirely  filled  up  the  interspace.  Another  fact 
deserves  attention  here,  namely,  that  regularly  on  the  Greek  stage 
a  drama,  or  acted  story,  consisted  in  reality  of  three  dramas, 
called  together  a  trilogy,  and  performed  consecutively  in  the 
course  of  one  day.  Now  you  may  conceive  a  tragedy  of  Shak- 
speare's  as  a  trilogy  connected  in  one  single  representation.  Di- 
vide Lear  into  three  parts,  and  each  would  be  a  play  with  the 
ancients  ;  or  take  the  three  JEschylean  dramas  of  Agamemnon, 
and  divide  them  into,  or  call  them,  as  many  acts,  and  they  to- 
gether would  be  one  play.  (»)  The  first  act  would  comprise  the 
usurpation  of  JEgisthus,  and  the  murder  of  Agamemnon  ;  the 
second,  the  revenge  of  Orestes,  and  the  murder  of  his  mother  ; 
•  and  the  third,  the  penance  and  absolution  of  Orestes  ; — occupy- 
ing a  period  of  twenty-two  years. 

The  stage  in  Shakspeare's  time  was  a  naked  room  with  a 
blanket  for  a  curtain  ;  but  he  made  it  a  field  for  monarchs. 
That  law  of  unity,  which  has  its  foundations,  not  in  the  fac- 
titious necessity  of  custom,  but  in  nature  itself,  the  unity  of  feel- 
ing, is  everywhere  and  at  all  times  observed  by  Shakspeare  in 
his  plays.  Read  Romeo  and  Juliet  ; — all  is  youth  and  spring  ; 
— youth  with  its  follies,  its  virtues,  its  precipitancies  ; — spring 
with  its  odors,  its  flowers,  and  its  transiency  ;  it  is  one  and  the 
same  feeling  that  commences,  goes  through,  and  ends  the  play. 
The  old  men,  the  Capulets  and  the  Montagues,  are  not  common 
old  men  :  they  have  an  eagerness,  a  heartiness,  a  vehemence, 


SHAKSPEARE'S   DRAMAS.  61 

the  effect  of  spring  ;  with  Romeo,  his  change  of  passion,  his 
sudden  marriage,  and  his  rash  death,  are  all  the  effects  of  youth  ; 
— whilst  in  Juliet  love  has  all  that  is  tender  and  melancholy  in 
the  nightingale,  all  that  is  voluptuous  in  the  rose,  with  whatever 
is  sweet  in  the  freshness  of  spring  ;  but  it  ends  with  a  long  deep 
sigh  like  the  last  breeze  of  the  Italian  evening,  (o)  This  unity 
of  feeling  and  character  pervades  every  drama  of  Shakspeare. 

It  seems  to  me  that  his  plays  are  distinguished  from  those  of 
all  other  dramatic  poets  by  the  following  characteristics  : 

1.  Expectation  in  preference  to  surprise.  It  is  like  the  true 
reading  of  the  passage — '  God  said,  Let  there  be  light,  and  there 
was  light ;' — not  there  teas  light.  As  the  feeling  with  which 
we  startle  at  a  shooting  star  compared  with  that  of  watching 
the  sunrise  at  the  pre-established  moment,  such  and  so  low  is 
surprise  compared  with  expectation. 

2.  Signal  adherence  to  the  great  law  of  nature,  that  all  opposites 
tend  to  attract  and  temper  each  other.  Passion  in  Shakspeare 
generally  displays  libertinism,  but  involves  morality  ;  and  if 
there  are  exceptions  to  this,  they  are,  independently  of  their  in- 
trinsic value,  all  of  them  indicative  of  individual  character,  and, 
like  the  farewell  admonitions  of  the  parent,  have  an  end  beyond 
the  parental  relation.  Thus  the  Countess's  beautiful  precepts  to 
Bertram,  by  elevating  her  character,  raise  that  of  Helena  her 
favorite,  and  soften  down  the  point  in  her  which  Shakspeare  does 
not  mean  us  not  to  see,  but  to  see  and  to  forgive,  and  at  length 
to  justify.  And  so  it  is  in  Polonius,  who  is  the  personified  memo- 
ry of  wisdom  no  longer  actually  possessed.  This  admirable  char- 
acter is  always  misrepresented  on  the  stage.  Shakspeare  never 
intended  to  exhibit  him  as  a  buffoon  ;  for  although  it  was  natu- 
ral that  Hamlet, — a  young  man  of  fire  and  genius,  detesting 
formality,  and  disliking  Polonius  on  political  grounds,  as  imagin- 
ing that  he  had  assisted  his  uncle  in  his  usurpation, — should  ex- 
press himself  satirically, — yet  this  must  not  be  taken  as  exactly 
the  poet's  conception  of  him.  In  Polonius  a  certain  induration 
of  character  had  arisen  from  long  habits  of  business  ;  but  take 
his  advice  to  Laertes,  and  Ophelia's  reverence  for  his  memory, 
and  we  shall  see  that  he  was  meant  to  be  represented  as  a  states- 
man somewhat  past  his  faculties — his  recollections  of  life  all  full 
cf  wisdom,  and  showing  a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  whilst 


62  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

what  immediately  takes  place  before  him,  and  escapes  from  him, 
is  indicative  of  weakness. 

But  as  in  Homer  all  the  deities  are  in  armor,  even  Venus  ;  so 
in  Shakspeare  all  the  characters  are  strong.  Hence  real  folly 
and  dulness  are  made  by  him  the  vehicles  of  wisdom.  There  is 
no  difficulty  for  one  being1  a  fool  to  imitate  a  fool ;  but  to  be,  re- 
main, and  speak  like  a  wise  man  and  a  great  wit,  and  yet  so  as 
to  give  a  vivid  representation  of  a  veritable  fool, — hie  labor,  hoc 
opus  est.  A  drunken  constable  is  not  uncommon,  nor  hard  to 
draw  ;  but  see  and  examine  what  goes  to  make  up  a  Dogberry. 

3.  Keeping  at  all  times  in  the  high  road  of  life.  Shakspeare 
has  no  innocent  adulteries,  no  interesting  incests,  no  virtuous 
vice ; — he  never  renders  that  amiable  which  religion  and  reason 
alike  teach  us  to  detest,  or  clothes  impurity  in  the  garb  of  virtue, 
like  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  the  Kotzcbues  of  the  day.  Shak- 
speare's  fathers  are  roused  by  ingratitude,  his  husbands  stung  by 
unfaithfulness  ;  in  him,  in  short,  the  affections  are  wounded  in 
those  points  in  which  all  may,  nay,  must,  feel.  Let  the  morality 
of  Shakspeare  be  contrasted  with  that  of  the  writers  of  his  own, 
or  the  succeeding  age,  or  of  those  of  the  present  day,  who  boast 
their  superiority  in  this  respect.  No  one  can  dispute  that  the 
result  of  such  a  comparison  is  altogether  in  favor  of  Shakspeare ; 
— even  the  letters  of  women  of  high  rank  in  his  age  were  often 
coarser  than  his  writings.  If  he  occasionally  disgusts  a  keen 
sense  of  delicacy,  he  never  injures  the  mind  ;  he  neither  excites, 
nor  flatters  passion,  in  order  to  degrade  the  subject  of  it ;  he  does 
not  use  the  faulty  thing  for  a  faulty  purpose,  nor  carries  on  war- 
fare against  virtue,  by  causing  wickedness  to  appear  as  no  wick- 
edness, through  the  medium  of  a  morbid  sympathy  with  the  un- 
fortunate. In  Shakspeare  vice  never  walks  as  in  twilight; 
nothing  is  purposely  out  of  its  place  ; — he  inverts  not  the  order 
of  nature  and  propriety, — does  not  make  every  magistrate  a 
drunkard  or  glutton,  nor  every  poor  man  meek,  humane,  and  tem- 
perate ;  he  has  no  benevolent  butchers,  nor  any  sentimental  rat- 
catchers. 

4.  Independence  of  the  dramatic  interest  on  the  plot.  The 
interest  in  the  plot  is  always  in  fact  on  account  of  the  characters, 
not  vice  versa,  as  in  almost  all  other  writers  ;  the  plot  is  a  mere 
canvass  and  no  more.  Hence  arises  the  true  justification  of  the 
tame  stratagem  being  used  in  regard  to  Benedict  and  Beatrice,— 


SHAKSPEARE'S  DRAMAS.  63 

the  vanity  in  each  being-  alike.  Take  away  from  the  Much  Ado 
About  Nothing  all  that  which  is  not  indispensable  to  the  plot, 
either  as  having  little  to  do  with  it,  or,  at  best,  like  Dogberry  and 
his  comrades,  forced  into  the  service,  when  any  other  less  in- 
geniously absurd  watchmen  and  night-constables  would  have  an- 
swered the  mere  necessities  of  the  action  ; — take  away  Benedict, 
Beatrice,  Dogberry,  and  the  reaction  of  the  former  on  the  charac- 
ter of  Hero, — and  what  will  remain  ?  In  other  writers  the  main 
agent  of  the  plot  is  always  the  prominent  character  ;  in  Shakspeare 
it  is  so,  or  is  not  so,  as  the  character  is  in  itself  calculated,  or  not 
calculated,  to  form  the  plot.  Don  John  is  the  mainspring  of  the 
plot  of  this  play ;  but  he  is  merely  shown  and  then  withdrawn. 

5.  Independence  of  the  interest  on  the  story  as  the  ground- 
work of  the  plot.  Hence  Shakspeare  never  took  the  trouble  of 
inventing  stories.  It  was  enough  for  him  to  select  from  those 
that  had  been  already  invented  or  recorded  such  as  had  one  or 
other,  or  both,  of  two  recommendations,  namely,  suitableness  to 
his  particular  purpose,  and  their  being  parts  of  popular  tradi- 
tion,— names  of  which  we  had  often  heard,  and  of  their  fortunes, 
and  as  to  which  all  we  wanted  was,  to  see  the  man  himself.  So 
it  is  just  the  man  himself,  the  Lear,  the  Shy  lock,  the  Richard, 
that  Shakspeare  makes  us  for  the  first  time  acquainted  with. 
Omit  the  first  scene  in  Lear,  and  yet  every  thing  will  remain  ; 
so  the  first  and  second  scenes  in  the  Merchant  of  Venice.  Indeed, 
it  is  universally  true. 

6.  Interfusion  of  the  lyrical — that  which  in  its  very  essence  is 
poetical — not  only  with  the  dramatic,  as  in  the  plays  of  Metas- 
tasio,  where  at  the  end  of  the  scene  comes  the  aria  as  the  exit 
speech  of  the  character, — but  also  in  and  through  the  dramatic. 
Songs  in  Shakspeare  are  introduced  as  songs  only,  just  as  songs 
are  in  real  life,  beautifully  as  some  of  them  are  characteristic  of 
the  person  who  has  sung  or  called  for  them,  as  Desdemona's 
'  Willow,'  and  Ophelia's  wild  snatches,  and  the  sweet  carollings 
in  As  You  Like  It.  But  the  whole  of  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  is  one  continued  specimen  of  the  dramatized  lyrical.  And 
observe  how  exquisitely  the  dramatic  of  Hotspur  ; — 

Marry,  and  I'm  glad  on't  with  all  my  heart ; 
I'd  rather  be  a  kitten  and  cry — mew,  &a 

melts  away  into  the  lyric  of  Mortimer  ; — 


64  OUTLINE    OF   AN   INTRODUCTORY 

I  understand  thy  looks  :  that  pretty  Welsh 

Which  thou  pourest  down  from  thite  swelling  heavens, 

I  am  too  perfect  in,  (fee. 

Henry  IV.  part  i.  act  iii.  se.  i. 

7.  The  characters  of  the  dramatis  personce,  like  those  in  real 
life,  are  to  be  inferrel  by  the  reader  ; — they  are  not  told  to  him. 
And  it  is  well  worth  remarking-  that  Shakspeare's  characters, 
like  those  in  real  life,  are  very  commonly  misunderstood,  and 
almost  always  understood  by  different  persons  in  different  ways. 
The  causes  are  the  same  in  either  case.  If  you  take  only  what 
the  friends  of  the  character  say,  you  may  be  deceived,  and  still 
more  so,  if  that  which  his  enemies  say  ;  nay,  even  the  character 
himself  sees  himself  through  the  medium  of  his  character,  and 
not  exactly  as  he  is.  Take  all  together,  not  omitting  a  shrewd 
hint  from  the  clown  or  the  fool,  and  perhaps  your  impression  will 
be  right ;  and  you  may  know  whether  you  have  in  fact  discov- 
ered the  poet's  own  idea,  by  all  the  speeches  receiving'  light  from 
it,  and  attesting  its  reality  by  reflecting  it. 

Lastly,  in  Shakspeare  the  heterogeneous  is  united,  as  it  is  in 
nature.  You  must  not  suppose  a  pressure  or  passion  always 
acting  on  or  in  the  character  ! — passion  in  Shakspeare  is  that  by 
which  the  individual  is  distinguished  from  others,  not  that  which 
makes  a  different  kind  of  him.  Shakspeare  followed  the  main 
march  of  the  human  affections.  He  entered  into  no  analysis  of 
the  passions  or  faiths  of  men,  but  assured  himself  that  such  and 
such  passions  and  faiths  were  grounded  in  our  common  nature, 
and  not  in  the  mere  accidents  of  ignorance  or  disease.  This  is  an 
important  consideration  and  constitutes  our  Shakspeare  the  morn- 
ing star,  the  guide  and  the  pioneer,  of  true  philosophy. 


OUTLINE  OF  AN  INTRODUCTORY  LECTURE  UPON  SHAK- 
SPEARE 

Of  that  species  of  writing  termed  tragi-comedy,  much  has  been 
produced  and  doomed  to  the  shelf.  Shakspeare's  comic  are  con- 
tinually re-acting  upon  his  tragic  characters.  Lear,  wandering 
amidst  the  tempest,  has  all  his  fee  ings  of  distress  increased  by 
the  overflowings  of  the  wild  wit  of  the  Fool,  as  vinegar  poured 


LECTURE   ON  SIIAKSPEARE.  65 

upon  wounds  exacerbates  their  pain.  Thus  even  his  comic  hu- 
mor tends  to  the  development  of  tragic  passion. 

The  next  characteristic  of  Shakspeare  is  his  keeping  at  all 
times  in  the  high  road  of  life,  &c*  Another  evidence  of  his  ex- 
quisite judgment  is,  that  he  seizes  hold  of  popular  tales  ;  Lear 
and  the  Merchant  of  Venice  were  popular  tales,  but  are  so  ex- 
cellently managed,  that  both  are  the  representations  of  men  in  all 
countries  and  of  all  times. 

His  dramas  do  not  arise  absolutely  out  of  some  one  extraor 
dinary  circumstance,  the  scenes  may  stand  independently  of  any 
such  one  connecting  incident,  as  faithful  representations  of  men 
and  manners.  In  his  mode  of  drawing  characters  there  are  no 
pompous  descriptions  of  a  man  by  himself;  his  character  is  to  be 
drawn,  as  in  real  life,  from  the  whole  course  of  the  play,  or  out 
of  the  mouths  of  his  enemies  or  friends.  This  may  be  exempli- 
fied in  Polonius,  whose  character  has  been  often  misrepresented. 
Shakspeare  never  intended  him  for  a  buffoon,  &c.f 

Another  excellence  of  Shakspeare  in  which  no  writer  equals 
him,  is  in  the  language  of  nature.  So  correct  is  it,  that  we  can 
see  ourselves  in  every  page.  The  style  and  manner  have  also 
that  felicity,  that  not  a  sentence  can  be  read,  without  its  being 
discovered  if  it  is  Shaksperian.  In  observation  of  living  charac- 
ters— cf  landlords  and  postilions  Fielding  has  great  excellence  ,* 
but  in  drawing  from  his  own  heart,  and  depicting  that  species  of 
character,  which  no  observation  could  teach,  he  failed  in  com- 
parison with  Richardson,  who  perpetually  places  himself,  as  it 
were,  in  a  day-dream.  Shakspeare  excels  in  both.  Witness  the 
accuracy  of  character  in  Juliet's  Nurse  ;  while  for  the  great 
characters  of  Iago,  Othello,  Hamlet,  Richard  III.,  to  which  h6 
could  never  have  seen  any  thing  similar,  he  seems  invariably  to 
have  asked  himself,  How  should  I  act  or  speak  in  such  circum- 
stances ?  His  comic  characters  are  also  peculiar.  A  drunken 
constable  was  not  uncommon  ;  but  he  makes  folly  a  vehicle  foi 
wit,  as  in  Dogberry  :  every  thing  is  a  substratum  on  which  his 
genius  can  erect  the  mightiest  superstructure. 

To  distinguish  that  which  is  legitimate  in   Shakspeare  from 

*  See  the  foregoing  Essay. — S.  0; 

\  See  the  Notes  on  Hamlet,  which  contain  the  same  general  view  of  the 
character  of  Polonius.  As  there  are  a  few  additional  hints  in  the  present 
report,  I  ha-ve  thought  it  worth  printing. — S.  C. 


66  LECTURE   ON   SHAKSPEARE. 

what  does  not  belong  to  him,  we  must  observe  his  varied  images 
symbolical  of  novel  truth,  thrusting  by,  and  seeming  to  trip  up 
each  other,  from  an  impetuosity  of  thought,  producing  a  flowing 
metre  and  seldom  closing  with  the  line.  In  Pericles,  a  play 
written  fifty  years  before,  but  altered  by  Shakspeare,  his  additions 
may  be  recognized  to  half  a  line,  from  the  metre,  which  has  the 
same  perfection  in  the  flowing  continuity  of  interchangeable 
metrical  pauses  in  his  earliest  plays,  as  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost.* 

Lastly  contrast  his  morality  with  the  writers  of  his  own  or  of 
the  succeeding  age,  &c.f  If  a  man  speak  injuriously  of  our 
friend,  our  vindication  of  him  is  naturally  warm.  Shakspeare 
has  been  accused  of  profaneness.  I  for  my  part  have  acquired 
from  perusal  of  him,  a  habit  of  looking  into  my  own  heart,  and 
am  confident  that  Shakspeare  is  an  author  of  all  others  the  most 
calculated  to  make  his  readers  better  as  well  as  wiser. 


Shakspeare,  possessed  of  wit,  humor,  fancy  and  imagination, 
built  up  an  outward  world  from  the  stores  within  his  mind,  as 
the  bee  finds  a  hive|  from  a  thousand  sweets  gathered  from  a 
thousand  flowers.  He  was  not  only  a  great  poet,  but  a  great 
philosopher.  Richard  III.,  Iago,  and  FalstafT  are  men  who  re- 
verse the  order  of  things,  who  place  intellect  at  the  head,  whereas 
it  ought  to  follow,  like  Geometry,  to  prove  -and  to  confirm.  No 
man,  either  hero  or  saint,  ever  acted  from  an  unmixed  motive  ; 
for  let  him  do  what  he  will  rightly,  still  Conscience  whispers  "it 
is  your  duty."  Richard,  laughing  at  conscience  and  sneering  at 
religion,  felt  a  confidence  in  his  intellect,  which  urged  him  to 
commit  .the  most  horrid  crimes,  because  he  felt  himself,  although 
inferior  in  form  and  shape,  superior  to  those  around  him  ;  he  felt 

*  Lamb  comparing  Fletcher  with  Shakspeare,  writes  thus :  "  Fletcher's 
ideas  moved  slow ;  his  versification,  though  sweet,  is  tedious,  it  stops 
every  turn ;  he  lays  line  upon  line,  making  up  one  after  the  other,  adding 
image  to  image  so  deliberately,  that  we  see  their  junctures.  Shakspeare 
mingles  every  thing,  runs  line  into  line,  embarrasses  sentences  and  meta- 
phors ;  before  one  idea  has  burst  its  shell,  another  is  hatched  and  clamor- 
ous for  disclosure."     Characters  of  Brain.  Writers,  contemp.  with  Shakspeare, 

\  See  the  foregoing  Essay. 

\  There  must  have  been  some  mistake  in  the  report  of  this  sentence, 
unless  there  was  a  momentary  lapse  of  mind  on  the  part  of  the  lecturer. 


ORDER  OF  SHAKSPEARES  PLAYS.  67 

ne  possessed  a  power,  which  they  had  not.  Iago,  on  the  same 
principle,  conscious  of  superior  intellect,  gave  scope  to  his  envy, 
and  hesitated  not  to  ruin  a  gallant,  open  and  generous  friend  in 
the  moment  of  felicity,  because  he  was  not  promoted  as  he  ex- 
pected. Othello  was  superior  in  place,  but  Iago  felt  him  to  be 
inferior  in  intellect,  and  unrestrained  by  conscience,  trampled 
upon  him. — Falsta'ff,  not  a  degraded  man  of  genius,  like  Burns, 
but  a  man  of  degraded  genius,  with  the  same  consciousness  of 
superiority  to  his  companions,  fastened  himself  on  a  young  Prince, 
to  prove  how  much  his  influence  on  an  heir-apparent  would  exceed 
that  of  a  statesman.  With  this  view  he  hesitated  not  to  adopt 
the  most  contemptible  of  all  characters,  that  of  an  open  and  pro- 
fessed liar  :  even  his  sensuality  was  subservient  to  his  intellect ; 
for  he  appeared  to  drink  sack,  that  he  might  have  occasion  to 
show  off  his  wit.  One  thing,  however,  worthy  of  observation.,  is 
the  perpetual  contrast  of  labor  in  FalstafF  to  produce  wit,  with 
the  ease  with  which  Prince  Henry  parries  his  shafts  ;  and  the 
final  contempt  which  such  a  character  deserves  and  receives 
from  the  young  king,  when  Falstaff  exhibits  the  struggle  of  in- 
ward determination  with  an  outward  show  of  humility. 


ORDER  OF  SHAKSPEARE'S  PLAYS. 

Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  arrange  the  plays  of 
Shakspeare,  each  according  to  its  priority  in  time,  by  proofs  de- 
rived from  external  documents.  How  unsuccessful  these  at- 
tempts have  been  might  easily  be  shown,  not  only  from  the 
widely  different  results  arrived  at  by  men,  all  deeply  versed  in 
the  black-letter  books,  old  plays,  pamphlets,  manuscript  records 
and  catalogues  of  that  age,  but  also  from  the  fallacious  and  un- 
satisfactory nature  of  the  facts  and  assumptions  on  which  the 
evidence  rests.  In  that  age,  when  the  press  was  chiefly  occupied 
with  controversial  or  practical  divinity, — when  the  law,  the 
church  and  the  state  engrossed  all  honor  and  respectability, — 
when  a  degree  of  disgrace,  levior  quczdam  infamice,  macula,  was 
attached  to  the  publication  of  poetry,  and  even  to  have  sported 
with  the  Muse,  as  a  private  relaxation,  was  supposed  to  be — a 
venial  fault,  indeed,  yet — something  beneath  the  gravity  of  a 
wise  man, — when  the  professed  poets  were  so  poor,  that  the  very 


68  ORDER  OF  SHAKSPEARE'S  PLAYS. 

expenses  of  the  press  demanded  the  liherality  of  some  wealthy 
individual,  so  that  two  thirds  of  Spenser's  poetic  works,  and  those 
most  highly  praised  by  his  learned  admirers  and  friends,  remained 
for  many  years  in  manuscript,  and  in  manuscript  perished, — 
when  the  amateurs  of  the  stage  were  comparatively  few,  and 
therefore  for  the  greater  part  more  or  less  known  to  each  other, — 
when  we  know  that  the  plays  of  Shakspeare,  both  during  and 
after  his  life,  were  the  property  of  the  stage,  and  published  by 
the  players,  doubtless  according  to  their  notions  of  acceptability 
with  the  visitants  of  the  theatre, — in  such  an  age,  and  under 
such  circumstances,  can  an  allusion  or  reference  to  any  drama  or 
poem  in  the  publication  of  a  contemporary  be  received  as  con- 
clusive evidence,  that  such  drama  or  poem  had  at  that  time 
been  published  ?  Or,  further,  can  the  priority  of  publication  it- 
self prove  any  thing  in  favor  of  actually  prior  composition. 

We  are  tolerably  certain,  indeed,  that  the  Venus  and  Adonis, 
and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  were  his  two  earliest  poems,  and 
though  not  printed  until  1593,  in  the  twenty-ninth  year  of  his 
age,  yet  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  they  had  remained  by  him 
in  manuscript  many  year?.  For  Mr.  Malone  has  made  it  highly 
probable,  that  he  had  commenced  a  writer  for  the  stage  in  1591, 
when  he  was  twenty-seven  years  old,  and  Shakspeare  himself 
assures  us  that  the  Venus  and  Adonis  was  the  first  heir  of  his 
invention.* 

Baffled,  then,  in  the  attempt  to  derive  any  satisfaction  from 
outward  documents,  we  may  easily  stand  excused  if  we  turn  our 
researches  towards  the  internal  evidences  furnished  by  the  writ- 
ings themselves,  with  no  other  positive  data  than  the  known 
facts,  that  the  Venus  and  Adonis  Avas  printed  in  1593,  the  Rape 
of  Lucrece  in  1594,  and  that  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  had  appeared 
in  1595, — and  with  no  other  presumptions  than  that  the  poems, 
his  very  first  productions,  were  written  many  years  earlier, — (for 
who  can  believe  that  Shakspeare  could  have  remained  to  his 
twenty-ninth  or  thirtieth  year  without  attempting  poetic  compo- 
sition of  any  kind  ?) — and  that  between  these  and  Romeo  and 
Juliet  there  had  intervened  one  or  two  other  dramas,  or  the 
chief  materials,  at  least,  of  them,  although  they  may  very  possi- 

*  But  if  the  first  heir  of  my  invention  prove  deformed,  I  shall  be  sorry 
it  had  so  noble  a  godfather,  &a. 

Dedication  of  the  V.  and  A.  to  Lord  Southampton. 


ORDER  OF  SHAKSPEARE'S  PLAYS.         69 

bly  have  appeared  after  the  success  of  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  and 
some  other  circumstances  had  given  the  poet  an  authority  with 
the  proprietors,  and  created  a  prepossession  in  his  favor  with  the 
theatrical  audiences. 

CLASSIFICATION  ATTEMPTED,    1802. 

First  Epoch. 
The  London  Prodigal. 
Cromwell. 

Henry  VI.,  three  parts,  first  edition. 
The  old  King  John. 
Edward  III. 

The  old  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 
Pericles. 

All  these  are  transition- works,  TJebergangswerlce  ;  not  his,  yet 
of  him. 

Second  Epoch. 

All's  Well  That  Ends  "Well : — hut  afterwards  worked  up 

afresh  (umgearbeitet),  especially  Parolles. 
The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona;  a  sketch. 
Romeo  and  Juliet ;  first  draft  of  it. 

Third  Epoch 

rises  into  the  full,  although  youthful  Shakspeare ;  it  was  the  r\eg~ 
ative  period  of  his  perfection. 

Love's  Labor's  Lost. 

Twelfth  Night. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 

Hi  chard  II. 

Henry  IV.  and  V. 

Henry  VIII. ;   Gelegenheitsgedicht. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  as  at  present. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Fourth  Epoch. 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing. 
Merry  "Wives  of  Windsor  ;  first  edition. 
Henry  VI.  ;  rifacimento 


70  ORDER   OF   SHAKSPEARE'S  PLAYS. 

Fifth  Epoch. 

The  period  of  beauty  was  now  past ;  and  that  of  deivfotfs  and 
grandeur  succeeds. 

Lear. 

Macbeth. 

Hamlet. 

Timon  of  Athens  ;  an  after- vibration  of  Hamlet. 

Troilus  and  Cressida  ;    Uebergang  in  die  Ironie. 

The  Roman  Plays. 

King  John,  as  at  present. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  )  ,   . .  . 

m      •        /■  i     «i  (  umgearoeitefi. 

laming  01  the  bhrew.        ) 

Measure  for  Measure. 

Othello. 

Tempest. 

Winter's  Tale. 

Cymbeline. 

CLASSIFICATION   ATTEMPTED,    1810. 

Shakspeare's  earliest  dramas  I  take  to  be, 
Love's  Labor's  Lost. 
All's  Well  That  Ends  Well. 
Comedy  of  Errors. 
Homeo  and  Juliet. 

In  the  second  class  I  reckon 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 
As  You  Like  It. 
Tempest. 
Twelfth  Night. 

In  the  third,  as  indicating  a  greater  energy — not  merely  of 
poetry,  but — of  all  the  world  of  thought,  yet  still  with  some  of 
the  growing  pains,  and  the  awkwardness  of  growth,  I  place 

Troilus  and  Cressida. 
Cymbeline. 
Merchant  of  Venice. 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing. 
Taming  of  the  Shrew. 


ORDER  OF  SHAKSPE ARE'S  PLAYS.  71 

In  the  fourth,  I  place  the  plays  containing  the  greatest  char- 
acters : 

Macbeth. 

Lear. 

Hamlet. 

Othello. 
And  lastly,  the  historic  dramas,  in  order  to  be  able  to  show  my 
reasons  for  rejecting  some  whole  plays,  and  very  many  scenes  in 
others. 

CLASSIFICATION    ATTEMPTED,     1819. 

I  think  Shakspeare's  earliest  dramatic  attempt — perhaps  even 
prior  in  conception  to  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  planned  before 
he  left  Stratford — was  Love's  Labor's  Lost.  Shortly  afterwards  I 
suppose  Pericles  and  certain  scenes  in  Jcronymo  to  have  been 
produced ;  and  in  the  same  epoch,  I  place  the  Winter's  Tale  and 
-Cymbeline,  differing  from  the  Pericles  by  the  entire  rifacimento 
of  it,  when  Shakspeare's  celebrity  as  poet,  and  his  interest,  no 
less  than  his  influence  as  a  manager,  enabled  him  to  bring  for- 
ward the  laid-by  labors  of  his  youth.  The  example  of  Titus  An- 
dronicus,  which,  as  well  as  Jeronymo,  was  most  popular  in  Shak- 
speare's first  epoch,  had  led  the  young  dramatist  to  the  lawles? 
mixture  of  dates  and  manners.  In  this  same  epoch  I  should 
place  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  remarkable  as  being  the  only  speci- 
men of  poetical  farce  in  our  language,  that  is,  intentionally  such  ; 
so  that  all  the  distinct  kinds  of  drama,  which  might  be  educed  d 
priori,  have  their  representatives  in  Shakspeare's  works.  I  say 
intentionally  such  ;  for  many  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays, 
and  the  greater  part  of  Ben  Jonson's  comedies  are  farce-plots.  I 
add  All's  Well  That  Ends  Well,  originally  intended  as  the  counter- 
part of  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  and  Romeo  and 
Tuliet. 

Second  Epoch. 

Richard  II. 

King  John. 

Henry  VI., — rifacimento  only. 

Richard  III. 

Third  Epoch. 
Henry  IV 


72  NOTES  ON  THE  TEMPEST. 

Henry  V. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. 

Henry  VIII. , — a  sort  of  historical  masque,  or  show  play. 

Fourth  Eiwch 

gives  all  the  graces  and  facilities  of  a  genius  in  full  possession 
and  habitual  exercise  of  power,  and  peculiarly  of  the  feminine, 
the  lady's  character. 

Tempest. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Twelfth  Night, 

and,  finally,  at  its  very  point  of  culmination, — 
Lear. 
Hamlet. 
Macbeth. 
Othello. 

Last  Epocn, 
when  the  energies  of  intellect  in  the  cycle  of  genius  were,  though 
in  a  rich  and  more  potentiated  form,  becoming  predominant  ovei 
passion  and  creative  self-manifestation. 

Measure  for  Measure. 
Timon  of  Athens. 
Coriolanus. 
Julius  Caesar. 
Antony  and  Cleopatra. 
Troilus  and  Cressida. 

Merciful,  wonder-making   Heaven  !    what  a    man    was  this 
Shakspeare  !     Myriad-minded,  indeed,  he  was. 

NOTES  ON  THE  TEMPEST. 

There  is  a  sort  of  improbability  with  which  we  are  shocked 
in  dramatic  representation,  not  less  than  in  a  narrative  of  real 
life.  Consequently,  there  must  be  rules  respecting  it ;  and  as 
rules  are  nothing  but  means  to  an  end  previously  ascertained — 
(inattention  to  which  simple  truth  has  been  the  occasion  of  all 


NOTES   ON   THE   TEMPEST.  73 

tne  pedantry  of  the  French  school), — we  must  first  determine 
what  the  immediate  end  or  object  of  the  drama  is.  And  here,  as 
I  have  previously  remarked,  I  find  two  extremes  of  critical  de- 
cision ; — the  French,  which  evidently  presupposes  that  a  perfect 
delusion  is  to  he  aimed  at, — an  opinion  which  needs  no  fresh 
confutation  ;  and  the  exact  opposite  to  it,  brought  forward  by 
Dr.  Johnson,  who  supposes  the  auditors  throughout  in  the  full 
reflective  knowledge  of  the  contrary.  In  evincing  the  impossi- 
bility of  delusion,  he  makes  no  sufficient  allowance  for  an  inter- 
mediate state,  which  I  have  before  distinguished  by  the  term, 
illusion,  and  have  attempted  to  illustrate  its  quality  and  character 
by  reference  to  our  mental  state,  when  dreaming.  In  both  cases 
we  simply  do  not  judge  the  imagery  to  be  unreal ;  there  is  a  neg- 
ative reality,  and  no  more.  Whatever,  therefore,  tends  to  pre- 
vent the  mind  from  placing  itself,  or  being  placed,  gradually  in 
that  state  in  which  the  images  have  such  negative  reality  for 
the  auditor,  destroys  this  illusion,  and  is  dramatically  improbable. 
JNTow  the  production  of  this  effect — a  sense  of  improbability — 
will  depend  on  the  degree  of  excitement  in  which  the  mind  is 
supposed  to  be.  Many  things  would  be  intolerable  in  the  first 
scene  of  a  play,  that  would  not  at  all  interrupt  our  enjoyment 
in  the  height  of  the  interest,  when  the  narrow  cockpit  may  be 
made  to  hold 

The  vasty  field  of  France,  or  we  may  cram 
Within  its  wooden  0,  the  very  casques 
That  did  affright  the  air  at  Agincourt. 

Again,  on  the  other  hand,  many  obvious  improbabilities  will  be 
endured,  as  belonging  to  the  groundwork  of  the  story  rather  than 
to  the  drama  itself,  in  the  first  scenes,  which  would  disturb  or 
disentrance  us  from  all  illusion  in  the  acme  of  our  excitement ; 
as  for  instance,  Lear's  division  of  his  kingdom,  and  the  banish- 
ment of  Cordelia. 

But,  although  the  other  excellences  of  the  drama  besides  this 
dramatic  probability,  as  unity  of  interest,  with  distinctness  and 
subordination  of  the  characters,  and  appropriateness  of  style,  are 
all,  so  far  as  they  tend  to  increase  the  inward  excitement,  means 
towards  accomplishing  the  chief  end,  that  of  producing  and  sup- 
porting this  willing  illusion, — yet  they  do  not  on  that  account- 
cease  to  be  ends  themselves  ;  and  we  must  remember  that,  as 

vol.  iv.  D 


74  NOTES  ON  THE  TEMPEST. 

such,  they  carry  their  own  justification  with  them,  as  long  as  they 
do  not  contravene  or  interrupt  the  total  illusion.  It  is  not  even 
always,  or  of  necessity,  an  objection  to  them,  that  they  prevent 
the  illusion  from  rising  to  as  great  a  height  as  it  might  otherwise 
have  attained  ; — it  is  enough  that  they  are  simply  compatible 
with  as  high 'a  degree  of  it  as  is  requisite  for  the  purpose.  Nay, 
upon  particular  occasions,  a  palpable  improbability  may  be  haz- 
arded by  a  great  genius  for  the  express  purpose  of  keeping  down 
the  interest  of  a  merely  instrumental  scene,  which  would  other- 
wise make  too  great  an  impression  for  the  harmony  of  the  entire 
illusion.  Had  the  panorama  been  invented  in  the  time  of  Pope 
Leo  X.,  Rafiael  would  still,  I  doubt  not,  have  smiled  in  contempt 
at  the  regret,  that  the  broom-twigs  and  scrubby  bushes  at  the 
back  of  some  of  his  grand  pictures  were  not  as  probable  trees  as 
those  in  the  exhibition. 

The  Tempest  is  a  specimen  of  the  purely  romantic  drama,  in 
which  the  interest  is  not  historical,  or  dependent  upon  fidelity  of 
portraiture,  or  the  natural  connection  of  events, — but  is  a  birth 
of  the  imagination,  and  rests  only  on  the  coaptation  and  union 
of  the  elements  granted  to,  or  assumed  by,  the  poet.  It  is  a 
species  of  drama  which  owes  no  allegiance  to  time  or  space,  and 
in  which,  therefore,  errors  of  chronology  and  geography — no 
mortal  sins  in  any  species — are  venial  faults,  and  count  for 
nothing.  It  addresses  itself  entirely  to  the  imaginative  faculty  ; 
and  although  the  illusion  may  be  assisted  by  the  effect  on  the 
senses  of  the  complicated  scenery  and  decorations  of  modern  times, 
yet  this  sort  of  assistance  is  dangerous.  For  the  principal  and 
only  genuine  excitement  ought  to  come  from  within, — from  the 
moved  and  sympathetic  imagination  ;  whereas,  where  so  much 
is  addressed  to  the  mere  external  senses  of  seeing  and  hearing, 
the  spiritual  vision  is  apt  to  languish,  and  the  attraction  from 
without  will  withdraAV  the  mind  from  the  proper  and  only  legiti- 
mate interest  which  is  intended  to  spring  from  within. 

The  romance  opens  with  a  busy  scene  admirably  appropriate 
to  the  kind  of  drama,  and  giving,  as  it  were,  the  key-note  to  the 
whole  harmony.  It  prepares  and  initiates  the  excitement  required 
for  the  entire  piece,  and  yet  does  not  demand  any  thing  from  the 
spectators,  which  their  previous  habits  had  not  fitted  them  to 
understand.  It  is  the  bustle  of  a  tempest,  frorn"which  the  real 
horrors  are  abstracted; — therefore  it  is  poetical,  though  not  in 


NOTES  ON  THE  TEMPEST.  75 

strictness  natural — (the  distinction  to  which  I  have  so  often  al- 
killed)— and  is  purposely  restrained  from  concentering  the  inter- 
est on  itself,  but  used  merely  as  an  induction  or  tuning  for  what 
is  to  follow. 

In  the  second  scene,  Prospero's  speeches,  till  the  entrance  of 
Ariel,  contain  the  finest  example,  I  remember,  of  retrospective 
narration  for  the  purpose  of  exciting  immediate  interest,  and  put- 
ting the  audience  in  possession  of  all  the  information  necessary 
for  the  understanding  of  the  plot  *  Observe,  too,  the  perfect 
probability  of  the  moment  chosen  by  Prospero  (the  very  Shak- 
speare himself,  as  it  were,  of  the  tempest)  to  open  out  the  truth 
to  his  daughter,  his  own  romantic  bearing,  and  how  completely 
any  thing  that  might  have  been  disagreeable  to  us  in  the  ma- 
gician, is  reconciled  and  shaded  in  the  humanity  and  natural 
feelings  of  the  father.  In  the  very  first  speech  of  Miranda  the 
simplicity  and  tenderness  of  her  character  are  at  once  laid  open  ; 
—it  would  have  been  lost  in  direct  contact  with  the  agitation  of 
the  first  scene.  The  opinion  once  prevailed,  but,  happily,  is  now 
abandoned,  that  Fletcher  alone  wrote  for  women  ;— the  truth  is, 
that  with  very  few,  and  those  partial  exceptions,  the  female 
characters  in  the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are,  when  of 
the  light  kind,  not  decent ;  when  heroic,  complete  viragos.  But 
in  Shakspeare  all  the  elements  of  womanhood  are  holy,  and  there 
is  the  sweet,  yet  dignified  feeling  of  all  that  continuates  society, 
as  sense  of  ancestry  and  of  sex,  with  a  purity  unassailable  by  soph- 
istry, because  it  rests  not  in  the  analytic  processes,  but  in  that 
sane  equipoise  of  the  faculties,  during  which  the  feelings  are  rep- 
resentative of  all  past  experience —not  of  the  individual  only, 

Pro.  Mark  his  condition,  and  th'  event ;  then  tell  me, 

If  this  might  be  a  brother. 
Mir  a.  I  should  sin, 

To  think  but  nobly  of  my  grandmother  ; 

Good  wombs  have  bore  bad  sons. 
Pro.  Now  the  condition,  (fee. 

Theobald  has  a  note  upon  this  passage,  and  suggests  that  Shakspeare  placed 
it  thus : — 

Pro.  Good  wombs  have  bore  bad  sons,— 
Now  the  condition. 

Mr.  Coleridge  writes  in  the  margin :  "I  can  not  but  believe  that  Theobald 
is  quite  right."— Ed. 


76  NOTES   ON   THE   TEMPEST. 

0  - 
but  of  all  those  by  whom  she  has  been  educated,  and  their  prcde* 
cessors  even  up  to  the  first  mother  that  lived.  Shakspeare  saw 
that  the  want  of  prominence,  which  Pope  notices  for  sarcasm, 
was  the  blessed  beauty  of  the  woman's  character,  and  knew  that 
it  arose  not  from  any  deficiency,  but  from  the  more  exquisite  har- 
mony of  all  the  parts  of  the  moral  being  constituting  one  living 
total  of  head  and  heart.  He  has  drawn  it,  indeed,  in  all  its  dis- 
tinctive energies  of  faith,  patience,  constancy,  fortitude, — shown 
m  all  of  them  as  following  the  heart,  which  gives  its  results  by 
a  nice  tact  and  happy  intuition,  without  the  intervention  of  the 
discursive  faculty,  sees  all  things  in  and  by  the  light  of  the  affec- 
tions, and  errs,  if  it  ever  err,  in  the  exaggerations  of  love  alone. 
In  all  the  Shaksperian  women  there  is  essentially  the  same  foun- 
dation and  principle  ;  the  distinct  individuality  and  variety  are 
merely  the  result  of  the  modification  of  circumstances,  whether  in 
Miranda  the  maiden,  in  Imogen  the  wife,  or  in  Katherine  the 
queen. 

But  to  return.  The  appearance  and  characters  of  the  super 
or  ultra-natural  servants  are  finely  contrasted.  Ariel  has  in 
every  thing  the  airy  tint  which  gives  the  name  ;  and  it  is  worthy 
of  remark  that  Miranda  is  never  directly  brought  into  comparison 
with  Ariel,  lest  the  natural  and  human  of  the  one  and  the  su- 
pernatural of  the  other  should  tend  to  neutralize  each  other  ; 
Caliban,  on  the  other  hand,  is  all  earth,  all  condensed  and  gross 
in  feelings  and  images  ;  (p)  he  has  the  dawrnings  of  understand- 
ing without  reason  or  the  moral  sense,  and  in  him,  as  in  some 
brute  animals,  this  advance  to  the  intellectual  faculties,  without 
the  moral  sense,  is  marked  by  the  appearance  of  vice.  For  it  is 
in  the  primacy  of  the  moral  being  only  that  man  is  truly  human  ; 
in  his  intellectual  powers  he  is  certainly  approached  by  the  brutes, 
an  1,  man's  whole  system  duly  considered,  those  powers  can  not 
be  considered  other  than  means  to  an  end,  that  is,  to  morality. 
Jj*  (n  this  scene,  as  it  proceeds,  is  displayed  the  impression  made 
by  Ferdinand  and  Miranda  on  each  other  ;  it  is  love  at  first  sight : 

At  the  first  sight 
They  have  chang'd  eyes : — 

and  it  appears  to  me,  that  in  all  cases  of  real  love,  it  is  at  one 
moment  that  it  takes  place.  That  moment  may  have  been  pre- 
pared by   previous   esteem,  admiration,  or  even  affection, — -ye1 


NOTES   ON   THE   TEMPEST.  77 

love  seems  to  require  a  momentary  act  of  volition,  by  which  a 
tacit  bond  of  devotion  is  imposed, — a  bond  not  to  be  thereaftei 
broken  without  violating  what  should  be  sacred  in  our  nature. 
How  finely  is  the  true  Shaksperian  scene  contrasted  with  Dryden's 
vulgar  alteration  of  it,  in  which  a  mere  ludicrous  psychological 
experiment,  as  it  were,  is  tried — displaying  nothing  but  indelicacy 
without  passion.  Prospero's  interruption  of  the  courtship  has 
often  seemed  to  me  to  have  no  sufficient  motive  ;  still  his  alleged 

reason — 

lest  too  light  •winning 
Make  the  prize  light — 

is  enough  for  the  ethereal  connections  of  the  romantic  imagina- 
tion, although  it  would  not  be  so  for  the  historical.*  The  whole 
courting  scene,  indeed,  in  the  beginning  of  the  third  act,  between 
the  lovers,  is  a  masterpiece ;  and  the  first  dawn  of  disobedience 
in  the  mind  of  Miranda  to  the  command  of  her  father  is  very 
finely  drawn,  so  as  to  seem  the  working  of  the  Scriptural  com- 
mand, Thou  shalt  leave  father  mid  mother,  &c.  0  !  with  what 
exquisite  purity  this  scene  is  conceived  and  executed  !  Shak- 
speare  may  sometimes  be  gross,  but  I  boldly  say  that  he  is  always 
moral  and  modest.  Alas  !  in  this  our  day  decency  of  manners  is 
preserved  at  the  expense  of  morality  of  heart,  and  delicacies  for 
vi.ce  are  allowed,  whilst  grossness  against  it  is  hypocritically,  or 
at  least  morbidly,  condemned. 

In  this  play  are  admirably  sketched  the  vices  generally  accom- 
panying a  low  degree  of  civilization  ;  and  in  the  first  scene  of 
the  second  act  Shakspeare  has,  as  in  many  other  places,  shown 
the  tendency  in  bad  men  to  indulge  in  scorn  and  contemptuous 
expressions,  as  a  mode  of  getting  rid  of  their  own  uneasy  feelings 
of  inferiority  to  the  good,  and  also,  by  making  the  good  ridiculous, 
of  rendering  the  transition  of  others  to  wickedness  easy.  Shak- 
speare never  puts  habitual  scorn  into  the  mouths  of  other  than 
bad  men,  as  here  in  the  instances  of  Antonio  and  Sebastian. 
The  scene  of  the  intended  assassination  of  Alonzo  and  Gonzalo  is 

*  Fer.  Yes,  faith,  and  all  his  Lords,  the  Duke  of  Milan, 

And  his  brave  son,  being  twain. 

Theobald  remarks  that  nobody  was  lost  in  the  wreck  ;  and  yet  that  no  such 
character  is  introduced  in  the  fable,  as  the  Duke  of  Milan's  son.  Mr.  C. 
notes:  "Must  not  Ferdinand  have  believed  he  was  lost  in  the  fleet  that  th* 
tempest  scattered  V — Ed. 


78  NOTES    ON  THE  TEMPEST. 

an  exact  counterpart  of  the  scene  between  Macbeth  and  his  lady, 
only  pitched  in  a  lower  key  throughout,  as  designed  to  be  frus 
trated  and  concealed,  and  exhibiting  the  same  profound  manage- 
ment in  the  manner  of  familiarizing  a  mind,  not  immediately  re- 
cipient, to  the  suggestion  of  guilt,  by  associating  the  proposed 
crime  with  something  ludicrous  or  out  of  place, — something  not 
habitually  matter  of  reverence.  By  this  kind  of  sophistry  the 
imagination  and  fancy  are  first  bribed  to  contemplate  the  sug- 
gested act,  and  at  length  to  become  acquainted  with  it.  Observe 
how  the  effect  of  this  scene  is  heightened  by  another  counterpart 
of  it  in  low  life, — that  between  the  conspirators  Stephano,  Cali- 
ban, and  Trinculo  in  the  second  scene  of  the  third  act,  in  which 
there  are  the  same  essential  characteristics. 

In  this  play  and  in  this  scene  of  it  are  also  shown  the  springs 
of  the  vulgar  in  politics, — of  that  kind  of  politics  which  is  in- 
woven with  human  nature.  In  his  treatment  of  this  subject, 
wherever  it  occurs,  Shakspeare  is  quite  peculiar.  In  other  wri- 
ters we  find  the  particular  opinions  of  the  individual ;  in  Massin- 
ger  it  is  rank  republicanism  ;  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  eve  a 
jure  divino  principles  are  carried  to  excess ; — but  Shakspeare 
never  promulgates  any  party  tenets.  He  is  always  the  philoso- 
pher and  the  moralist,  but  at  the  same  time  with  a  profound 
veneration  for  all  the  established  institutions  of  society,  and  for 
those  classes  which  form  the  permanent  elements  of  the  state — 
especially  never  introducing  a  professional  character,  as  such, 
otherwise  than  as  respectable.  If  he  must  have  any  name,  he 
should  be  styled  a  philosophical  aristocrat,  delighting  in  those 
hereditary  institutions  which  have  a  tendency  to  bind  one  age  to 
another,  and  in  that  distinction  of  ranks,  of  which,  although  few 
may  be  in  possession,  all  enjoy  the  advantages.  Hence,  again, 
you  will  observe  the  good  nature  with  which  he  seems  always  to 
make  sport  with  the  passions  and  follies  of  a  mob,  as  with  an 
irrational  animal.  He  is  never  angry  with  it,  but  hugely  content 
with  holding  up  its  absurdities  to  its  face  ;  and  sometimes  you 
may  trace  a  tone  of  almost  affectionate  superiority,  something 
like  that  in  which  a  father  speaks  of  the  rogueries  of  a  child. 
See  the  good-humored  way  in  which  he  describes  Stephano  pass- 
ing from  the  most  licentious  freedom  to  absolute  despotism  over 
Trinculo  and  Caliban.  The  truth  is,  Shakspeare's  characters 
are  al]  genera  intensely  individualized ;  the  results  of  meditation, 


NOTES  ON  LOVE'S  LABOR'S  LOST.  70 

of  which  observation  supplied  the  drapery  and  the  colors  neces- 
sary to  combine  them  with  each  other.  He  had  virtually  sur- 
veyed all  the  great  component  powers  and  impulses  of  human 
nature, — had  seen  that  their  different  combinations  and  subordi- 
nations were  in  fact  the  individualizers  of  men,  and  showed  how 
their  harmony  was  produced  by  reciprocal  disproportions  of  excess 
or  deficiency.  The  language  in  which  these  truths  are  expressed 
was  not  drawn  from  any  set  fashion,  but  from  the  profoundest 
depths  of  his  moral  being,  and  is  therefore  for  all  ages. 


LOVE'S    LABOR'S   LOST. 

The  characters  in  this  play  are  either  impersonated  out  of 
Shakspeare's  own  multiformity  by  imaginative  self-position,  or 
out  of  such  as  a  country  town  and  school-boy's  observation  might 
supply, — the  curate,  the  schoolmaster,  the  Armado  (who  even  in 
my  time  was  not  extinct  in  the  cheaper  inns  of  North  Wales), 
and  so  on.  The  satire  is  chiefly  on  follies  of  words.  Biron  and 
Rosaline  are  evidently  the  pre-existent  state  of  Benedict  and 
Beatrice,  and  so,  perhaps,  is  Boyet  of  Lafeu,  and  Costard  of  the 
Tapster  in  Measure  for  Measure  ;  and  the  frequency  of  the 
rhymes,  the  sweetness  as  well  as  the  smoothness  of  the  metre, 
and  the  number  of  acute  and  fancifully  illustrated  aphorisms, 
are  all  as  they  ought  to  be  in  a  poet's  youth.  True  genius  begins 
by  generalizing  and  condensing ;  it  ends  in  realizing  and  expand- 
ing.    It  first  collects  the  seeds. 

Yet  if  this  juvenile  drama  had  been  the  only  one  extant  of  our 
Shakspeare,  and  we  possessed  the  tradition  only  of  his  riper 
works,  or  accounts  of  them  in  writers  who  had  not  even  men- 
tioned this  play, — how  many  of  Shakspeare's  characteristic  fea- 
tures might  we  not  still  have  discovered  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost, 
though  as  in  a  portrait  taken  of  him  in  his  boyhood. 

I  can  never  sufficiently  admire  the  wonderful  activity  of  thought 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  first  scene  of  the  play,  rendered  natural, 
as  it  is,  by  the  choice  of  the  characters,  and  the  whimsical  deter- 
mm&ikw.  on  which  the  drama  is  founded.  A  whimsical  deter- 
mination certainly ; — yet  not  altogether  so  very  improbable  to 
those  who  are  conversant  in  the  history  of  the  middle  ages,  with 
their  Courts  of  Love,  and  all  that  lighter  drapery  of  chivalry 


80  NOTES   ON  LOVE'S  LABOR'S  LOST. 

which  engaged  even  mighty  kings  with  a  sort  of  serio-comic  inter 
est,  and  may  well  be  supposed  to  have  occupied  more  completely 
the  smaller  princes,  at  a  time  when  the  noble's  or  prince's  court 
contained  the  only  theatre  of  the  domain  or  principality.  This 
sort  of  story,  too,  was  admirably  suited  to  Shakspeare's  times, 
when  the  English  court  was  still  the  foster-mother  of  the  state 
and  the  muses ;  and  when,  in  consequence,  the  courtiers,  and 
men  of  rank  and  fashion,  affected  a  display  of  wit,  point,  and 
sententious  observation,  that  would  be  deemed  intolerable  at 
present, — but  in  which  a  hundred  years  of  controversy,  involving 
every  great  political,  and  every  dear  domestic,  interest,  had 
trained  all  but  the  lowest  classes  to  participate.  Add  to  this  the 
very  style  of  the  sermons  of  the  time,  and  the  eagerness  of  the 
Protestants  to  distinguish  themselves  by  long  and  frequent  preach- 
ing, it  will  be  found  that,  from  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  to  the 
abdication  of  James  II.,  no  country  ever  received  such  a  national 
education  as  England. 

Hence  the  comic  matter  chosen  in  the  first  instance  is  a  ridic- 
ulous imitation  or  apery  of  this  constant  striving  after  logical 
precision,  and  subtle  opposition  of  thoughts,  together  with  a 
making  the  most  of  every  conception  or  image,  by  expressing  it 
under  the  least  expected  property  belonging  to  it,  and  this,  again, 
rendered  specially  absurd  by  being  applied  to  the  most  current 
subjects  and  occurrences.  The  phrases  and  modes  of  combination 
in  argument  were  caught  by  the  most  ignorant  from  the  custom 
of  the  age,  and  their  ridiculous  misapplication  of  them  is  most 
amusingly  exhibited  in  Costard ;  whilst  examples  suited  only  to 
the  gravest  propositions  and  impersonations,  or  apostrophes  to 
abstract  thoughts  impersonated,  which  are  in  fact  the  natural  lan- 
guage only  of  the  most  vehement  agitations  of  the  mind,  are  adopt- 
ed by  the  coxcombry  of  Armado  as  mere  artifices  of  ornament. 

The  same  kind  of  intellectual  action  is  exhibited  in  a  more 
serious  and  elevated  strain  in  many  other  parts  of  this  play. 
Biron's  speech  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  act  is  an  excellent  speci- 
men of  it.  It  is  logic  clothed  in  rhetoric  ; — but  observe  how 
Shakspeare,  in  his  two-fold  being  of  poet  and  philosopher,  avails 
himself  of  it  to  convey  profound  truths  in  the  most  lively  images, 
— the  whole  remaining  faithful  to  the  character  supposed  to 
utter  the  lines,  and  the  expressions  themselves  constituting  a 
fuither  development  of  that  character  : — 


NOTES   ON  LOVE'S  LABOR'S   LOST,  81 

Other  slow  arts  entirely  keep  the  brain : 

And  therefore  finding  barren  practisers, 

Scarce  show  a  harvest  of  their  heavy  toil : 

But  love,  first  learned  in  a  lady's  eyes, 

Lives  not  alone  immured  in  the  brain ; 

But,  with  the  motion  of  all  elements, 

Courses  as  swift  as  thought  in  every  power ; 

And  gives  to  every  power  a  double  power, 

Above  their  functions  and  their  offices. 

It  adds  a  precious  seeing  to  the  eye, 

A  lover's  eyes  will  gaze  an  eagle  blind ; 

A  lover's  ear  will  hear  the  lowest  sound, 

When  the  suspicious  tread  of  theft  is  stopp'd : 

Love's  feeling  is  more  soft  and  sensible, 

Than  are  the  tender  horns  of  cockled  snails ; 

Love's  tongue  proves  dainty  Bacchus  gross  in  taste 

For  valor,  is  not  love  a  Hercules, 

Still  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides? 

Subtle  as  Sphinx  ;  as  sweet  and  musical, 

As  bright  Apollo's  lute,  strung  with  his  hair ; 

And  when  love  speaks,  the  voice  of  all  the  gods 

Makes  heaven  drowsy  with  the  harmony. 

Never  durst  poet  touch  a  pen  to  write, 

Until  his  ink  were  temper'd  with  love's  sighs ; 

O,  then  his  lines  would  ravish  savage  ears, 

And  plant  in  tyrants  mild  humility. 

From  women's  eyes  this  doctrine  I  derive : 

They  sparkle  still  the  right  Promethean  fire ; 

They  are  the  books,  the  arts,  the  academes, 

That  show,  contain,  and  nourish  all  the  world ; 

Else,  none  at  all  in  aught  proves  excellent ; 

Then  fools  you  were  these  women  to  forswear ; 

Or,  keeping  what  is  sworn,  you  will  prove  fools. 

For  wisdom's  sake,  a  word  that  all  men  love  ; 

Or  for  love's  sake,  a  word  that  loves  all  men ; 

Or  for  men's  sake,  the  authors  of  these  women ; 

Or  women's  sake,  by  whom  we  men  are  men  ; 

Let  us  once  lose  our  oaths,  to  find  ourselves, 

Or  else  we  lose  ourselves  to  keep  our  oaths: 

It  is  religion,  to  be  thus  forsworn : 

For  charity  itself  fulfils  the  law  : 

And  who  can  sever  love  fr  )m  charity  ? — 

This  is  quite  a  study ; — sometimes  you  see  this  youthful  god  of 
poetry  connecting  disparate  thoughts  purely  by  means  of  resem- 
blances in  the  words  expressing  them — a  thing  in  character  in 
lighter  comedy,  especially  of  that  kind  in  which  Shakspeare  de- 


32  NOTES  ON  LOVE'S  LABOR'S  LOST. 

lights,  namely,  the  purposed  display  of  wit,  though,  sometimes, 
too,  disfiguring  his  graver  scenes  ; — but  more  often  you  may  see 
him  doubling  the  natural  connection  or  order  of  logical  conse- 
quence in  the  thoughts  by  the  introduction  of  an  artificial  and 
sought  for  resemblance  in  the  words,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  third 
line  of  the  play — 

And  then  grace  us  in  the  disgrace  of  death; — 

this  being  a  figure  often  having  its  force  and  propriety,  as  justi- 
fied by  the  law  of  passion,  which,  inducing  in  the  mind  an  unu- 
sual activity,  seeks  for  means  to  waste  its  superfluity — when  in 
the  highest  degree — in  lyric  repetitions  and  sublime  tautology — 
(at  her  feet  he  boived,  he  fell,  he  lay  down;  at  her  feet  he  boived  > 
he  fell ;  where  he  bowed,  there  he  fell  down,  dead) — and,  in 
lower  degrees,  in  making  the  words  themselves  the  subjects  and 
materials  of  that  surplus  action,  and  for  the  same  cause  that  agi- 
tates our  limbs,  and  forces  our  very  gestures  into  a  tempest  in 
states  of  high  excitement. 

The  mere  style  of  narration  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  like  that 
of  JEgeon  in  the  first  scene  of  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  and  of  the 
Captain  in  the  second  scene  of  Macbeth,  seems  imitated  with  its 
defects  and  its  beauties  from  Sir  Philip  Sidney  ;  whose  Arcadia, 
though  not  then  published,  was  already  well  known  in  manu- 
script copies,  and  couid  hardly  have  escaped  the  notice  and  ad- 
miration of  Shakspeare  as  the  friend  and  client  of  the  Earl  of 
Southampton.  The  chief  defect  consists  in  the  parentheses  and 
parenthetic  thoughts  and  descriptions,  suited  neither  to  the  pas- 
sion of  the  speaker,  nor  the  purpose  of  the  person  to  whom  the 
information  is  to  be  given,  but  manifestly  betraying  the  author 
himself — not  by  way  of  continuous  under-song,  but — palpably, 
and  so  as  to  show  themselves  addressed  to  the  general  reader. 
However,  it  is  not  unimportant  to  notice  how  strong  a  presump- 
tion the  diction  and  allusions  of  this  play  afford,  that,  though 
Shakspeare' s  acquirements  in  the  dead  languages  might  not  bo 
such  as  we  suppose  in  a  learned  education,  his  habits  had, 
nevertheless,  been  scholastic,  and  those  of  a  student.  For  a 
young  author's  first  work  almost  always  bespeaks  his  recent  pur- 
suits, and  his  first  observations  of  life  are  either  drawn  from  the 
immediate  employments  of  his  youth,  and  from  the  characters 
and  images  most  deeply  impressed  on  his  mind  in  the  situations 


NOTES  ON  LOVE'S  LABOR'S  LOST.  83 

in  which  those  employments  had  placed  him  ;— or  else  they  are 
fixed  on  such  objects  and  occurrences  in  the  world,  as  are  easily 
connected  with,  and  seem  to  bear  upon,  his  studies  and  the  hith- 
erto exclusive  subjects  of  his  meditation.  Just  as  Ben  Jonson, 
who  applied  himself  to  the  drama  after  having  served  in  Flan- 
ders, fills  his  earliest  plays  with  true  or  pretended  soldiers,  the 
wrongs  and  neglects  of  the  former,  and  the  absurd  boasts  and 
knavery  of  their  counterfeits.  So  Lessing's  first  comedies  are 
placed  in  the  universities,  and  consist  of  events  and  characters 
conceivable  in  an  academic  life. 

I  will  only  further  remark  the  sweet  and  tempered  gravity, 
with  which  Shakspeare  in  the  end  draws  the  only  fitting  moral 
which  such  a  drama  afforded.  Here  Rosaline  rises  up  to°the  full 
height  of  Beatrice  : — 

Ros.  Oft  have  I  heard  of  you,  my  lord  Biron, 

Before  I  saw  you,  and  the  world's  large  tongue 

Proclaims  you  for  a  man  replete  with  mocks ; 

Full  of  comparisons,  and  wounding  flouts, 

Which  you  on  all  estates  will  execute 

That  lie  within  the  mercy  of  your  wit : 

To  weed  this  wormwood  from  your  fruitful  brain, 

And  therewithal,  to  win  me,  if  you  please, 

(Without  the  which  1  am  not  to  be  won,) 

You  shall  this  twelvemonth  term  from  day  to  day 

Visit  the  speechless  sick,  and  still  converse 

With  groaning  wretches ;  and  your  talk  shall  be, 

With  all  the  fierce  endeavor  of  your  wit, 

To  enforce  the  pained  impotent  to  smile. 

Biron.  To  move  wild  laughter  in  the  throat  of  death  f 
It  can  not  be ;  it  is  impossible ; 
Mirth  can  not  move  a  soul  in  agony. 

Ros.  Why,  that's  the  way  to  choke  a  gibing  spirit. 
Whose  influence  is  begot  of  that  loose  grace, 
Which  shallow  laughing  hearers  give  to  fools  : 
A  jest's  prosperity  lies  in  the  ear 
Of  him  that  hears  it,  never  in  the  tongue 
Of  him  that  makes  it :  then,  if  sickly  ears, 
Deaf 'd  with  the  clamors  of  their  own  dear  groans, 
Will  hear  your  idle  scorns,  continue  then, 
And  I  will  have  you,  and  that  fault  withal ; 
m     But,  if  they  will  not,  throw  away  that  spirit, 
And  I  shall  find  you  empty  of  that  fault, 
Right  joyful  of  your  reformation. 


84 


NOTES   ON  MIDSUMMER  NIGHTS   DREAM. 
Act  v.  sc.  2.  In  Biron's  speech  to  the  Princess  : 

—  and,  therefore,  like  the  eye, 
Full  of  straying  shapes,  of  habits,  and  of  forms— 

Either  read  stray,  which  I  prefer ;  or  throw  full  hack  to  the  pr* 
ceding  lines-  like  the  eye,  full 

Of  straying  shapes,  &c. 

lr,  the  same  scene  : 

Biron.  And  w* at  to  me,  my  love?  and  wh at  to  me ! 

Ros.  You  must  he  purged  too,  your  sins  are  rank  ; 
You  are  attaint  with  fault  and  perjury : 
Therefore,  if  you  my  favor  mean  to  get, 
A  twelvemonth  shall  you  spend,  and  never  rest, 
But  seek  tLe  weary  beds  of  people  sick. 

There  can  he  no  doubt,  indeed,  about  the  propriety  of  expunging 
this  speech  of  Rosaline's;  it  soils  the  very  page  that  retains  it. 
But  I  do  not  agree  with  Warhurtonand  others  m  striking  out  the 
preceding  line  also.  It  is  quite  in  Biron's  character  ;  and  Rosa- 
Lie  not  answering  it  immediately,  Dumam  takes  up  the  ques- 
tion  for  him,  and,  after  he  and  Longaville  are  answered,  Biron 
with  evident  propriety,  says  : — 

Studies  my  mistress  ?  &c 

MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S  DREAM. 

Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Her.  0  cross  !  too  high  to  be  enthrall'd  to  low— 
Zys   Or  else  misgrafted,  in  respect  of  years ; 
Her    O  spite !  too  old  to  be  engag'd  to  young— 
Lys.  Or  else  it  stood  upon  the  choice  of  friends. 
Her.  O  hell!  to  chuse  love  by  another's  eye  ! 

Theks  is  ..o  authority  for  any  alteration  ;-but  I  never  can 
help  feeling  how  great  an  improvement  it  would  he  if  the  two 
former  of  Hermia's  exclamations  were  omitted  ;-the  third  and 
only  appropriate  one  would  then  beeome  a  beauty,   and  most 

natural.  * 

lb.  Helena's  speech  : — 

I  will  go  tell  him  of  fair  Hermia's  flight,  Ac 


NOTES  ON  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S  DREAM.  85 

I  am  convinced  that  Shakspeare  availed  himself  of  the  title  of 
this  play  in  his  own  mind,  and  worked  upon  it  as  a  dream 
throughout,  but  especially,  and,  perhaps,  unpleasingly,  in  this 
broad  determination  of  ungrateful  treachery  in  Helena,  so  undis- 
guisedly  avowed  to  herself,  and  this,  too,  after  the  witty  cool  phi- 
losophizing that  precedes.  The  act  itself  is  natural,  and  the  re- 
solve so  to  act  is,  I  fear,  likewise  too  true  a  picture  of  the  lax 
hold  which  principles  have  on  a  woman's  heart,  when  opposed 
to,  or  even  separated  from,  passion  and  inclination.  For  women 
are  less  hypocrites  to  their  own  minds  than  men  are,  because  in 
general  they  feel  less  proportionate  abhorrence  of  moral  evil  in 
and  for  itself,  and  more  of  its  outward  consequences,  as  detection, 
and  loss  of  character  than  men — their  natures  being  almost 
wholly  extroitive.  Still,  however  just  in  itself,  the  representation 
of  this  is  not  poetical ;  we  shrink  from  it,  and  can  not  harmonize 
it  with  the  ideal. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Theobald's  edition. 

Through  bush,  through  brier — - 

•vr  -TV*  *9v*  "7? 

Through  flood,  through  fire — 

"What  a  noble  pair  of  ears  this  worthy  Theobald  must  have 
had  !     The  eight  amphimacers  or  cretics, — 

Over  hill,  over  dale, 
Thoro'  bush,  thoro'  brier, 
Over  park,  over  pale, 
Thoro'  flood,  thoro  fire — 

have  a  delightful  effect  on  the  ear  in  their  sweet  transition  to  the 
trochaic, — 

I  do  wander  ev'ry  where 

Swifter  than  the  moones  sphere,  &c. 

The  last  words  as  sustaining  the  rhyme,  must  be  considered,  as 
in  fact  they  are,  trochees  in  time. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  give  some  correct  examples  in  Eng- 
lish of  the  principal  metrical  feet  : 

Pyrrhic  or  Dibrach,  u  u  =  body,  spirit. 
Tribrach,  u  u  v  =  nobody,  hastily  pronounced. 
Iambus  u  —  =  delight. 
Trochee,  —  u  =  lightly. 
Spondee, =  God  spake. 


86  NOTES  ON  MIDSUMMER  NIGHT'S  DREAM. 

The  paucity  of  spondees  in  single  words  in  English  and,  indeed, 
in  the  modern  languages  in  general,  makes,  perhaps,  the  greatest 
distinction,  metrically  considered,  between  them  and  the  Greek 
and  Latin. 

Dactyl,  —  v  v  =  merrily. 

Anapaest,  o  u —  =  apropos,  or  the  first  three  syllables  of 

ceremony. * 
Amphibrachys,  u  —  u  =  delightful. 
Amphimacer,  —  u  —  =  over  hill. 

Antibacchius,  u =  the  Lord   God. 

Bacchius, u  =  Helvellyn. 

Molossus, =  John  James  Jones. 

These  simple  feet  may  suffice  for  understanding  the  metres  of 
Shakspeare,  for  the  greater  part  at  least  : — but  Milton  can  not 
be  made  harmoniously  intelligible  without  the  composite  feet, 
the  Ionics,  Paeons,  and  Epitrites. 

lb.  sc.  2.  Titania's  speech  : — (Theobald  adopting  "Warburton's 
reading.) 

Which  she,  with  pretty  and  with  swimming  gate 
Folly ing  (her  womb  then  rich  with  my  young  squire) 
"Would  imitate,  (fee. 

Oh  !  oh  !  Heaven  have  mercy  on  poor  Shakspeare,  and  also  on 
Mr.  Warburton's  mind's  eye  ! 

Act  v.  sc.  1.     Theseus'  speech  : — (Theobald.) 

And  what  poor  [willing]  duty  can  not  do, 
Noble  respect  takes  it  in  might,  not  merit. 

To  my  ears  it  would  read  far  more  Shaksperian  thus  : 


And  what  poor  duty  can  not  do,  yet  would 
Noble  respect,  (fee. 


lb.  sc.  2. 


Puck.    Now  the  hungry  lion  roars, 

And  the  wolf  behowls  the  moon ; 
Whilst  the  heavy  ploughman  snores 
All  with  weary  task  foredone,  (fee. 

Very  Anacreon  in  perfectness,  proportion,  grace,  and  sponta- 
neity !  So  far  it  is  Greek  ; — but  then  add,  0  !  what  wealth,  what 
wild  ranging,  and  yet  what  compression  and  condensation  of, 

*  Written  probably  by  mistake  for  "  ceremonious." 


NOTES   ON  AS  YOU  LIKE   IT.  87 

English  fancy  !  In  truth,  there  is  nothing  in  Anacreon  more 
perfect  than  these  thirty  lines,  or  half  so  rich  and  imaginative. 
They  form  a  speckless  diamond. 


COMEDY  OF  ERRORS. 

The  myriad-minded  man,  our,  and  all  men's,  Shakspeare,  has 
in  this  piece  presented  us  with  a  legitimate  farce  in  exactest 
consonance  with  the  philosophical  principles  and  character  of 
farce,  as  distinguished  from  comedy  and  from  entertainments.  A 
proper  farce  is  mainly  distinguished  from  comedy  by  the  license 
allowed,  and  even  required,  in  the  fable,  in  order  to  produce 
strange  and  laughable  situations.  The  story  need  not  be  probable, 
it  is  enough  that  it  is  possible.  A  comedy  would  scarcely  allow 
even  the  two  Antipholuses  ;  because,  although  there  have  been 
instances  of  almost  indistinguishable  likeness  in  two  persons,  yet 
these  are  mere  individual  accidents,  casus  ludentis  natures,  and 
the  verum  will  not  excuse  the  inverisimile.  But  farce  dares  add 
the  two  Dromios,  and  is  justified  in  so  doing  by  the  laws  of  its 
end  and  constitution.  In  a  word,  farces  commence  in  a  postulate 
which  must  be  granted. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

OIL     What,  boy ! 

Orla.  Come,  come,  elder  brother,  you  are  too  young  in  this. 

OIL     Wilt  thou  lay  hands  on  me,  villain  ? 

There  is  a  beauty  here.  The  word  '  boy'  naturally  provokes 
ind  awakens  in  Orlando  the  sense  of  his  manly  powers  ;  and  with 
the  retort  of '  elder  brother,'  he  grasps  him  with  firm  hands,  and 
makes  him  feel  he  is  no  boy. 

lb.  OU.  Farewell,  good  Charles. — Now  will  I  stir  this  gamester:  I 
hope,  I  shall  see  an  end  of  him ;  for  my  soul,  yet  I  know  not  why,  hates 
nothing  more  than  him.  Yet  he's  gentle ;  never  sehool'd,  and  yet  learn'd ; 
full  of  noble  device ;  of  all  sorts  enchantingly  beloved !  and,  indeed,  so  much 
in  the  heart  of  the  world,  and  especially  of  my  own  people,  who  best  know 
him,  that  I  am  altogether  misprized :  but  it  shall  not  be  so  long ;  this  wrest- 
ler shall  clear  all. 


g8  NOTES   ON  AS  YOU  LIKE  IT. 

This  has  always  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  most  ur.-Shaks 
perian  speeches  in  all  the  genuine  works   of  our  poet ;  yet    1 
should  he  nothing  surprised,  and  greatly  pleased,  to  find  it  here- 
after a  fresh  beauty,  as  has  so  often  happened  to  me  with  other 
supposed  defects  of  great  men.      1810. 

It  is  too  venturous  to  charge  a  passage  in  Shakspeare  with  warn 
of  truth  to  nature  ;  and  yet  at  first  sight  this  speech  of  Oliver  & 
expresses  truths,  which  it  seems  almost  impossible  that  any  mind 
should  so  distinctly,  so  livelily,  and  so  voluntarily,  have  presented 
to  itself  in  connection  with  feelings  and  intentions  so  malignant, 
and  so  contrary  to  those  which  the  qualities  expressed  would  nat- 
urally have  called  forth.  But  I  dare  not  say  that  this  seeming 
unnaturalness  is  not  in  the  nature  of  an  abused  wilfulness,  when 
united  with  a  strong  intellect.  In  such  characters  there  is  some 
times  a  gloomy  self-gratification  in  making  the  absoluteness  oi 
the  will  (sit  pro  ratione  voluntas  .')  evident  to  themselves  by  set 
ting  the  reason  and  the  conscience  in  full  array  against  it.    1818. 

lb.  sc.  2. 

Cclia  If  you  saw  yourself  with  your  eyes,  or  knew  yourself  with  your 
judgment,  the  fear  of  your  adventure  would  counsel  you  to  a  more  uiual 
enterprise. 

Surely  it  should  be  '  our  eyes'  and  '  our  judgment.' 

lb.  sc.  3. 

00.    But  is  all  this  for  your  father  ? 

Ros.  No,  some  of  it  is  for  my  child's  father. 

Theobald  restores  this  as  the  reading  of  the  older  editions.  It 
mavbe  so:  but  who  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  mistake  for  'my 
father's  child,'  meaning  herself?  According  to  Theobald's  note 
a  most  indelicate  anticipation  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  Rosalind 
without  reason  ;— and  besides  what  a  strange  thought,  and  ho* 
out  of  place,  and  unintelligible  ! 

Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

Take  thou  no  scorn 

To  wear  the  horn,  the  lusty  horn ; 

It  was  a  crest  ere  thou  wast  born. 

I  question  whether  there  exists  a  parallel  instance  of  a  phrase, 
that  like  this  of '  horns'  is  universal  in  all  languages,  and  yet  ior 
which  no  one  has  discovered  even  a  plausible  origin. 


NOTES   ON  TWELFTH  NIGHT.  89 


TWELFTH  NIGHT. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Duke's  speech  : — 

—  so  full  of  shapes  is  fancy, 
That  it  alone  is  high  fantastical. 

Warbue.ton's  alteration  of  is  intc  in  is  needless.  '  Fancy'  may 
very  well  be  interpreted  '  exclusive  affection,'  or  '  passionate  pref- 
erence.' Thus,  bird-fanciers,  gentlemen  of  the  fancy,  that  is, 
amateurs  of  boxing,  &c.  The  play  of  assimilation, — the  meaning 
one  sense  chiefly,  and  yet  keeping  both  senses  in  view,  is  perfectly 
Shaksperian. 

Act  ii.  sc.  3.     Sir  Andrew's  speech  : — 

An  explanatory  note  on  Pigrogromitus-  would  have  been  more 
acceptable  than  Theobald's  grand  discovery  that  '  lemon'  ought 
to  be  '  leman.' 

lb.  Sir  Toby's  speech  :  (Warburton's  note  on  the  Peripatetic 
philosophy.) 

Shall  we  rouse  the  night-owl  in  a  catch,  that  will  draw  three  souls  out 
of  one  weaver  ? 

0  genuine,  and  inimitable  (at  least  I  hope  so)  "Warburton  ! 
This  note  of  thine,  if  but  one  in  five  millions,  would  be  half  a 
one  too  much. 

Tb.  sc.  4. 

Duke.  My  life  upon't,  young  though  thou  art,  thine  eye 
Hath  stay'd  upon  some  favor  that  it  loves ; 
Hath  it  not,  boy  ? 

Vio.  A  little,  by  your  favor. 

Duke.  What  kind  of  woman  is't  ? 

And  yet  Viola  was  to  have  been  presented  to  Orsino  as  a  eunuch  ! 
— Act  i.  sc.  2.  Viola's  speech.     Either  she  forgot  this,  or  else  she 
had  altered  her  plan, 
lb. 

Vio.  A  blank,  my  lord ;  she  never  told  her  love ! — 
But  let  concealment,  &c. 

After  the  first  line  (of  which  the  last  five  words  should  be  spoken 
with,  and  drop  down  in,  a  deep  sigh),  the  actress  ought  to  make 


90  NOTES   ON   ALL'S  WELL   THAT   ENDS   WELL. 

a  pause  ;  and  th3n  start  afresh,  from  the  activity  of  thought,  bora 
of  suppressed    fselings,    and  which    thought    had   accumulated 
during  the  brief  interval,  as  vital  heat  under  the  skin  during  a 
dip  in  cold  water, 
lb.  sc.  5. 

Fabian.  Though  our  silence  be  drawn  from  us  by  cars,  yet  peace. 

Perhaps,  '  cables.' 
Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

Clown.  A  sentence  is  but  a  cheveril  glove  to  a  good  wit.  (Theobald's 
note.) 

Theobald's  etymology  of  '  cheveril'  is,  of  course,  quite  right ; 
— but  he  is  mistaken  in  supposing  that  there  were  no  such  things 
as  gloves  of  chicken-skin.  They  were  at  one  time  a  main  article 
in  chirocosmetics. 

Act  v.  sc.  1.     Clown's  speech  : — 

So  that,  conclusions  to  be  as  kisses,  if  your  four  negatives  make  your  two 
affirmatives,  why,  then,  the  worse  for  my  friends,  and  the  better  for  my 
foes. 

(Warburton  reads  '  conclusion  to  be  asked,  is.') 
Surely  Warburton  could  never  have  wooed  by  kisses  and  won, 
or  he  would  not  have  flounder-flatted  so  just  and  humorous,  nor 
less  pleasing  than  humorous,  an  image  into  so  profound  a  nihility. 
In  the  name  of  love  and  wonder,  do  not  four  kisses  make  a  double 
affirmative  ?  The  humor  lies  in  the  whispered  '  No  !'  and  the  in- 
viting '  Don't !'  with  which  the  maiden's  kisses  are  accompanied, 
and  thence  compared  to  negatives,  which  by  repetition  constitute 
an  affirmative. 


ALL'S  WELL  THAT  ENDS  WELL. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Count  If  the  living  be  enemy  to  the  grief,  the  excess  makeis  it  soon 
mortal. 

Bert.  Madam,  I  desire  your  holy  wishes. 
Laf.  How  understand  we  that  ? 

Bertram  and  Lafeu,  I  imagine,  both  speak  together, — Lafeu 
referring  to  the  Countess's  rather  obscure  remark. 


NOTES   ON  ALL'S   WELL   THAT   ENDS  WELL.  91 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     (Warburton's  note.) 

King.  — let  higher  Italy 

(Those  'bated,  that  inherit  but  the  fall 
Of  the  last  monarchy)  see,  that  you  come 
Not  to  woo  honor,  but  to  wed  it. 

It  would  be,  I  own,  an  audacious  and  unjustifiable  change  oi 
the  text ;  but  yet,  as  a  mere  conjecture,  I  venture  to  suggest 
'bastards,' for  ''bated.'  As  it  stands,  in  spite  of  Warburton's 
note,  I  can  make  little  or  nothing  of  it.  Why  should  the  king 
except  the  then  most  illustrious  states,  which,  as  being  republics, 
were  the  more  truly  inheritors  of  the  Roman  grandeur  ? — With 
my  conjecture,  the  sense  would  be ; — '  let  higher,  or  the  more 
northern  part  of  Italy — (unless  '  higher'  be  a  corruption  for  '  hir'd,' 
— the  metre  seeming  to  demand  a  monosyllable)  (those  bastards 
that  inherit  the  infamy  only  of  their  fathers)  see,  &c.'  The  fol- 
lowing 'woo'  and  'wed'  are  so  far  confirmative  as  they  indi- 
cate Shakspeare' s  manner  of  connection  by  unmarked  influences 
of  association  from  some  preceding  metaphor.  This  it  is  which 
makes  his  style  so  peculiarly  vital  and  organic.  Likewise  '  those 
girls  of  Italy'  strengthen  the  guess.  The  absurdity  of  Warbur- 
ton's gloss,  which  represents  the  king  calling  Italy  superior,  and 
then  excepting  the  only  part  the  lords  were  going  to  visit,  must 
strike  every  one. 

lb.  sc.  3. 

Laf.  They  say,  miracles  are  past;  and  we  have  our  philosophical  persons 
to  make  modern  and  familiar,  things  supernatural  and  causeless. 

Shakspeare,  inspired,  "as  it  might  seem,  with  all  knowledge, 
here  uses  the  word  '  causeless'  in  its  strict  philosophical  sense  ; — 
cause  being  truly  predicable  only  of  phenomena,  that  is,  things 
natural,  and  not  of  noumena,  or  things  supernatural. 

Act  iii.  sc.  5. 

Dia.  The  Count  Rousillon : — know  you  such  a  one  ? 
Hel.  But  by  the  ear  that  hears  most  nobly  of  him ; 
His  face  I  know  not. 

Shall  we  say  here,  that  Shakspeare  has  unnecessarily  made  his 
loveliest  character  utter  a  lie  ? — Or  shall  we  dare  think  that, 
where  to  deceive  was  necessary,  he  thought  a  pretended  verbal 
verity  a  double  crime,  equally  with  the  other  a  lie  to  the  hearer, 
and  at  the  same  time  an  attempt  to  lie  to  one's  own  conscience  ? 


92  NOTES  ON  MEASURE   FOR  MEASURE. 

.      MERRY  WIVES  OF  WINDSOR. 

Act  i.  sc.  I. 

Shal.  The  luce  is  the  fresh  fish,  the  salt  fish  is  an  eld  coat. 

I  can  not  understand  this.  Perhaps  there  is  a  corruption  both 
of  words  and  speakers.  Shallow  no  sooner  corrects  one  mistake 
of  Sir  Hugh's,  namely  '  louse'  for  '  luce,'  a  pike,  but  the  honest 
Welchman  falls  into  another,  namely,  '  cod'  (baccala)  Cambricc 
'  cot'  for  coat. 

Shal.  The  luce  is  the  fresh  fish — 
Evans.  The  salt  fish  is  au  old  cot. 

'  Luce  is  a  fresh  fish,    and  not   a  louse,'  says   Shallow.     'Aye. 
aye,'  quoth  Sir   Hugh  ;  '  the  fresh  fish  is  the  luce  ;  it  is  an  old 
cod  that  is  the  salt  fish.'     At  all  events,  as  the  text  stands,  there 
is  no  sense  at  all  in  the  words, 
lb.  sc.  3. 

Fal.  Now,  the  report  goes,  she  has  all  the  rule  of  her  husband's  purse 
she  hath  a  legion  of  angels. 

Pist.  As  many  devils  entertain ;  and  To  her,  boy,  say  I. 

Perhaps  it  is — 

As  many  devils  enter  (or  enter'd)  swine ;  and  to  her,  boy,  say  I : — 

a  somewhat  profane,  but  not  un-Shaksperian,   allusion    to  the 
'legion'  in  St.  Luke's  'gospel.' 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE. 

This  play,  which  is  Shakspeare's  throughout,  is  to  me  the  most 
jjainful — say  rather,  the  only  painful — part  of  his  genuine  works. 
The  comic  and  tragic  parts  equally  border  on  the  (JuorjTbi>, — the 
one  being  disgusting,  the  other  horrible  ;  and  the  pardon  and  mar- 
riage of  Angelo  not  merely  baffles  the  strong  indignant  claim  of 
justice — (for  cruelty,  with  lust  and  damnable  baseness,  can  not 
be  forgiven,  because  we  can  not  conceive  them  as  being  morally 
repented  of) — but  it  is  likewise  degrading  to  the  character  of  wo- 


NOTES  ON  MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE.         93: 

man,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  who  can  follow  Shakspeare  in 
his  errors  only,  have  presented  a  still  worse,  because  more  loath- 
some and  contradictory,  instance  of  the  same  kind  in  the  Night- 
Walker,  in  the  marriage  of  Alathe  to  Algripe.  Of  the  counter- 
balancing beauties  of  Measure  for  Measure,  I  need  say  nothing  ; 
for  I  have  already  remarked  that  the  play  is  Shakspeare  s 
throughout. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

Ay,  but  to  die,  and  go  we  know  not  where,  &o. 

This  natural  fear  of  Claudio,  from  the  antipathy  we  have  to  death,  seems 
very  little  varied  from  that  infamous  wish  of  Maecenas,  recorded  in  the 
101st  epistle  of  Seneca: 

Debi le?n  facito  manu 

Debilem  pede,  coxa,  &c. — Warburton's  note. 

I  can  not  but  think  this  rather  an  heroic  resolve,  than  an  infa 
mous  wish.  It  appears  to  me  to  be  the  grandest  symptom  of  ar, 
immortal  spirit,  when  even  that  bedimmed  and  overwhelmed 
spirit  recked  not  of  its  own  immortality,  still  to  seek  to  be, — to 
be  a  mind,  a  will. 

As  fame  is  to  reputation,  so  heaven  is  to  an  estate,  or  immedi- 
ate advantage.  The  difference  is,  that  the  self-love  of  the  former 
can  not  exist  but  by  a  complete  suppression  and  habitual  supplan- 
tation  of  immediate  selfishness.  In  one  point  of  view,  the  miser 
is  more  estimable  than  the  spendthrift ; — only  that  the  miser's 
present  feelings  are  as  much  of  the  present  as  the  spendthrift's. 
But  ceteris  paribus,  that  is,  upon  the  supposition  that  whatever 
is  good  or  lovely  in  the  one  coexists  equally  in  the  other,  then, 
doubtless,  the  master  of  the  present  is  less  a  selfish  being,  an  an- 
imal, than  he  who  lives  for  the  moment  with  no  inheritance  in 
the  future.  "Whatever  can  degrade  man,  is  supposed  in  the  lat- 
ter case,  whatever  can  elevate  him,  in  the  former.  And  as  to 
self; — strange  and  generous  self!  that  can  only  be  such  a  self  by 
a  complete  divestment  of  all  that  men  call  self, — of  all  that  can 
make  it  either  practically  to  others,  or  consciously  to  the  individual 
himself,  different  from  the  human  race  in  its  ideal.  Such  self  is 
but  a  perpetual  religion,  an  inalienable  acknowledgment  of  God, 
the  sole  basis  and  ground  of  being.  In  this  sense,  how  can  I  love 
God,  and  not  love  myself  as  far  as  it  is  of  God  ? 


94  NOTES  ON   CYMBELINE. 

lb.  sc.  2. 

Pattern  in  himself  to  know, 
Grace  to  stand,  and  virtue  go. 

Worse  metre,  indeed,  but  better  English  would  be,  — 

Grace  to  stand,  virtue  to  go. 


CYMBELINE. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

You  do  not  meet  a  man,  but  frowns :  our  bloods 
No  more  obey  the  heavens,  than  our  courtiers' 
Still  seem,  as  does  the  king's. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  of  Mr.  Tyrwhitt's  emendations  of 
'courtiers'  and  '  king,'  as  to  the  sense  ;— only  it  is  not  impossible 
that  Shakspeare's  dramatic  language  may  allow  of  the  word, 
<  brows'  or  '  faces'  being  understood  after  the  word  '  courtiers, 
which  might  then  remain  in  the  genitive  case  plural.     But  the 
nominative  plural  makes  excellent  sense,  and  is  sufficiently  ele- 
gant, and  sounds  to  my  ear  Shaksperian.     What,  however,  is 
meant  by  ■  our  bloods  no  more  obey  the  heavens  V     Dr.  Johnson  s 
assertion,  that  '  bloods'  signify  '  countenances,'  is,  I  think,  mis- 
taken both  in  the  thought  conveyed— (for  it  was  never  a  popu- 
lar belief  that  the  stars  governed  men's  countenances)— and  in 
the  usage,  which  requires  an  antithesis  of  the  blood,— or  the 
temperament  of  the  four  humors,  choler,  melancholy,  phlegm, 
and  the  red  globules,  or  the  sanguine  portion,  which  was  supposed 
not  to  be  in  our  own  power,  but,  to  be  dependent  on  the  influ- 
ences of  the  heavenly  bodies,— and  the  countenances  which  are 
in  our  power  really,  though  from  flattery  we  bring  them  into  a 
no  less  apparent  dependence  on  the  sovereign,  than  the  former 
are  in  actual  dependence  on  the  constellations. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  word  'courtiers'  was  a  mis- 
print for  '  countenances,'  arising  from  an  anticipation,  by  fore- 
glance  of  the  compositor's  eye,  of  the  word  '  courtier'  a  few 
lines  below.  The  written  r  is  easily  and  often  confounded  with 
the  written  n.  The  compositor  read  the  first  syllable  court,  and 
—his  eye  at  the  same  time  catching  the  word  courtier  lowei 
down— he  completed  the  word  without  reconsulting  the  copy. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  Shakspeare  intended  first  to  express  gen- 


NOTES  ON  CYMBELINE.  95 

eraUy,  the  same  thought,  whieh  a  little  afterwards  he  repeats 
w.th  a  pabular  applieation  to  the  persons  meant  ;-a  coS» 
usage  of  the  pronommal  ■  our/  where  the  speaker  does  not  really 
mean  to  mclude  mmself ;  and  the  word  'yon'  is  an  additional 
eonfirmataon  of  the  '  our,'  being  nsed  in  this  plaee,  for    men' 

fnSrnoTt^  *?  -  '  ^  *  -  ^  '  *°  « 

Act  i.  sc.  2.     Imogen's  speech  : 

T  .  .  —My  dearest  husband, 

I  something  fear  my  father  s  wrath  ;  but  nothino- 
(Always  reserv'd  my  holy  duty)  what 
His  rage  can  do  on  me. 

^wrth.'6  emPlMSiS  °"  '  me  '    fW  '"**'  "  a  mere  rePetit™  of 

Gym.  O  disloyal  thing 

That  should'st  repair  my  youth,  thou  heapest 
A  year  s  age  on  me  ! 

How  is  it  that  tie  commentators  take  no  notice  of  the  uh- 
Shakspenan  defect  m  the  metre  of  the  second  line,  and  what  m 

ST  "  the;amC'  "  ^  harm°n^  With  th*  »™  and  fee" 
mg  .  Some  word  or  words  must  have  slipped  out  after  «  youth  ' 
—probably 'and  see:'-—  '         ' 

That  should'st  repair  my  youth  !_and  see,  thou  heap'st,  <fcc. 
lb.  sc.  4.     Pisanio's  speech  : 

— For  so  long 
As  he  could  make  me  with  this  eye  or  ear 
Distinguish  him  from  others,  &e. 

Bntjtfm  eye,'  in  spite  of  the  supposition  of  its  being  nsed 
*™c,,SVery  awkward.     I  should  think  that  either  '  or 
the  was  Shakspeare's  word  : 

As  he  could  make  me  or  with  eye  or  ear. 
lb.  sc.  7.     Iachimo's  speech  : 

Hath  nature  given  them  eyes 
To  see  this  vaulted  arch,  and  the  rich  crop 
Of  sea  and  land,  which  can  distinguish  'twixt 
The  fiery  orbs  above,  and  the  twinn'd  stones 
Upon  the  number'd  beach. 


— 01 


96  NOTES  ON  TITUS  ANDBONICUS. 

I  would  suggest  •  cope'  for  <  crop.'     As  to  ■  twinn'd  stone,'-- 
may  it  not  be  a  bold  catachresis  for  muscles,  cockles   and  other 
empty  shells  with  hinges,  which  are  truly  twinned  ?     I  would 
take  Dr  Farmer's  'umber'd,'  which  I  had  proposed  before  I  ever 
heard  of  its  having  been  already  offered  by  him  :  but  I  do  not 
adopt  his  interpretation  of  the  word,  which  I  flunk  .  not  derived 
from  umbra,  a  shade,  but  from  umber,  a  dingy  yel  ow-brown   o,l, 
which  most  commonly  forms  the  mass  of  the  sludge  on  the  sea- 
shore, and  on  the  banks  of  tide  rivers  at  low  water      One  other 
possible  interpretation  of  this  sentence  has  occurred  to  me,  just 
barely  worth  mentioning-that  the  ■  twinn'd  stones  are  the  au- 
erim  stones  upon  the  numbered  beech,  that  ts,  the  astronomical 
tables  of  beech- wood. 
Act  v.  sc.  5. 

Sooth.  When  as  a  lion's  whelp,  Ac. 

It  is  not  easy  to  conjecture  why  Shakspeare  should  have  intro- 
duced this  ludicrous  scroll,  which  answers  no  one  purpose  either 
propulsive  or  explicatory,  unless  as  a  joke  on  etymology.  (?) 

TITUS  ANDRONICU3. 

Act  i.  sc.  ] .     Theobald's  note. 

I  never  heard  it  so  much  as  intimated,  that  he  (Shakspeare)  turned  his 
.enuTto  spiriting,  before  he  associated  with  the  player,,  and  became 
one  of  their  body. 

That  Shakspeare  never  'turned  his  genius  to  stage-writing,'  as 
Theobald  most  Theobaldice  phrases  it,  before  he  became  an  ac- 
tor is  an  assertion  of  about  as  much  authority  as  the  precious 
story  that  he  left  Stratford  for  deer-stealing,  and  that  he  lived  by 
holding  gentlemen's  horses  at  the  doors  of  the  theatre,  and  other 
trash  oAhat  areh-gossip,  old  Aubrey.  The  metre  is  an  argu- 
ment against  Titus  Andronicus  being  Shakspeare  s,  worth  a  score 
",ch  chronological  surmises.  Yet  I  incline  to  think  that  both  in 
this  play  and  in  Jeronymo,  Shakspeare  wrote  some  passages,  and 
that  they  are  the  earliest  of  his  compositions. 
Act  v.  sc.  2.  - 

I  think  it  not  improbable  that  the  lines  from— 


NOTES   ON   TROILUS  AND   CRESSIDA.  97 

I  am  not  mad  ;  I  know  thee  well  enough  — ; 

******* 

So  thou  destroy  Rapine,  and  Murder  there. 

were  written  by  Shakspeare  in  his  earliest  period.     But  instead. 
of  the  text — 

Revenge,  which  makes  the  foul  offender  quake, 
Tit.  Art  thou  Revenge  ?  and  art  thou  sent  to  me  ? — 

the  words  in  italics  ought  to  be  omitted. 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA. 

Mr.  Pope  (after  Dryden)  informs  us,  that  the  story  of  Troilus  and  Cres- 
sida  was  originally  the  work  of  one  Lollius,  a  Lombard :  but  Dryden  goes 
yet  further ;  he  declares  it  to  have  been  written  in  Latin  verse,  and  that 
Chaucer  translated  it. — Lollius  was  a  historiographer  of  Urbino  in  Italy. 
Note  in  Stockdale's  edition,  1807. 

1  Lollius  was  a  historiographer  of  Urbino  in  Italy.'  So  af- 
firms the  notary,  to  whom  the  Sieur  Stockdale  committed  the 
disfadmento  of  Ayscough's  excellent  edition  of  Shakspeare.  Pity 
that  the  researchful  notary  has  not  either  told  us  in  what  century, 
and  of  what  history,  he  was  a  writer,  or  been  simply  content  to 
depose,  that  Lollius,  if  a  writer  of  that  name  existed  at  all,  was 
a  somewhat  somewhere.  The  notary  speaks  of  the  Troy  Boke 
of  Lydgate,  printed  in  1513.  I  have  never  seen  it  ;  but  I  deeply 
regret  that  Chalmers  did  not  substitute  the  whole  of  Lydgate' s 
works  from  the  MSS.  extant,  for  the  almost  worthless  Gower. 

The  Troilus  and  Cressida  of  Shakspeare  can  scarcely  be  classed 
with  Lis  dramas  of  Greek  and  Roman  history  ;  but  it  forms  an 
intermediate  link  between  the  fictitious  Greek  and  Roman  his- 
tories, which  we  may  call  legendary  dramas,  and  the  proper  an- 
cient histories  ;  that  is,  between  the  Pericles  or  Titus  Andronicus 
and  the  Coriolanus,  or  Julius  Caesar.  Cymbeline  is  a  congene? 
with  Pericles,  and  distinguished  from  Lear  by  not  having  any  de- 
clared prominent  object.  But  where  shall  we  class  the  Timon 
of  Athens  ?  Perhaps  immediately  below  Lear.  It  is  a  Lear  of 
the  satirical  drama  ;  a  Lear  of  domestic  or  ordinary  life  ;— a  local 
eddy  of  passion  on  the  high  road  of  society,  while  all  around  is 
the  week-day  goings  on  of  wind  and  weather  ;  a  Lear,  therefore, 
without  its  soul-searching  flashes,  its  ear-cleaving  thunder-claps, 

vol.  iv.  E 


98  NOTES   ON   TROILUS   AND   CRESSIDA. 

its  meteoric  splendors, — without  trie  contagion  and  the  fearful 
sympathies  of  nature,  the  fates,  the  furies,  the  frenzied  elements, 
dancing  in  and  out,  now  breaking  through,  and  scattering, — now 
hand  in  hand  with, — the  fierce  or  fantastic  group  of  human  pas- 
sions, crimes,  and  anguishes,  reeling  on  the  unsteady  ground,  in 
a  wild  harmony  to  the  shock  and  the  swell  of  an  earthquake. 
But  my  present  subject  was  Troilus  and  Cressida  ;  and  I  suppose 
that,  scarcely  knowing  what  to  say  of  it,  I  by  a  cunning  of  in- 
stinct ran  off  to  subjects  on  which  I  should  find  it  difficult  not  to 
say  too  much,  though  certain  after  all  that  I  should  still  leave  the 
better  part  unsaid,  and  the  gleaning  for  others  richer  than  my 
own  harvest. 

Indeed,  there  is  no  one  of  Shakspeare's  plays  harder  to  charac- 
terize. The  name  and  the  remembrances  connected  with  it,  pre- 
pare us  for  the  representation  of  attachment  no  less  faithful  than 
fervent  on  the  side  of  the  youth,  and  of  sudden  and  shameless  in- 
constancy on  the  part  of  the  lady.  And  this  is,  indeed,  as  the 
gold  thread  on  which  the  scenes  are  strung,  though  often  kept  out 
of  sight,  and  out  of  mind  by  gems  of  greater  value  than  itself. 
But  as  Shakspeare  calls  forth  nothing  from  the  mausoleum  of  his- 
tory, or  the  catacombs  of  tradition,  without  giving,  or  eliciting, 
some  permanent  and  general  interest,  and  brings  forward  no  sub- 
ject which  he  does  not  moralize  or  intellectualize, — so  here  he 
has  drawn  in  Cressida  the  portrait  of  a  vehement  passion,  that, 
having  its  true  origin  and  proper  cause  in  warmth  of  tempera- 
ment, fastens  on,  rather  than  fixes  to,  some  one  object  by  liking 
and  temporary  preference. 

There's  language  in  her  eye,  her  cheek,  her  lip, 
Nay,  her  foot  speaks ;  her  wanton  spirits  look  out 
At  every  joint  and  motive  of  her  body. 

This  Shakspeare  has  contrasted  with  the  profound  affection 
represented  in  Troilus,  and  alone  worthy  the  name  of  love  ; — 
affection,  passionate  indeed, — swoln  with  the  confluence  of  youth- 
ful instincts  and  youthful  fancy,  and  growing  in  the  radiance  of 
hope  newly  risen,  in  short  enlarged  by  the  collective  sympathies 
of  nature ; — but  still  having  a  depth  of  calmer  element  in  a  will 
stronger  than  desire,  more  entire  than  choice,  and  which  gives 
permanence  to  its  own  act  by  converting  it  into  faith  and  duty. 
Hence  with  excellent  judgment,  and  with  an  excellence  higher 


NOTES   ON   TROILUS  AND   CRESSIDA.  99 

than,  mere  judgment   can  give,  at  the  close  of  the  play,  when 
Cressida  has  sunk  into  infamy  below  retrieval  and  beneath  hope 
the  same  will,  which  had  been  the  substance  and  the  basis  of  his 
love,  while  the  restless  pleasures   and  passionate  longings  like 
sea-waves,  had  tossed  but  on  its  surface,— this  same  moral  energy 
is  represented  as  snatching  him  aloof  from  all  neighborhood  with 
her  dishonor,  from  all  lingering  fondness  and  languishing  regrets 
whilst  it  rushes  with  him  into   other  and   nobler  duties,°  and 
deepens  the  channel,  which  his  heroic  brother's  death  had  left 
empty  for  its  collected  flood.     Yet  another  secondary  and  subor- 
dinate purpose  Shakspeare  has  inwoven  with  his  delineation  of 
these  two  characters,— that  of  opposing  the  inferior  civilization 
but  purer  morals,  of  the  Trojans  to  the  refinements,  deep  policy', 
but  duplicity  and  sensual  corruptions  of  the  Greeks. 

To  all  this,  however,  so  little  comparative  projection  is  given  — 
nay,  the  masterly  group  of  Agamemnon,  Nestor,  and  Ulysses  and 
still  more  in  advance,  that  of  Achilles,  Ajax,  and  Thersites  so 
manifestly  occupy  the  fore-ground,  that  the  subservience  and 
vassalage  of  strength  and  animal  courage  to  intellect  and  policy 
I  seems  to  be  the  lesson  most  often  in  our  poet's  view,  and  which 
;  he  has  taken  little  pains  to  connect  with  the  former  more  inter- 
esting moral  impersonated  in  the  titular  hero  and  heroine  of  the 
drama.  But  I  am  half  inclined  to  believe,  that  Shakspeare's 
mam  object,  or  shall  I  rather  say,  his  ruling  impulse,  was  to 
translate  the  poetic  heroes  of  paganism  into  the  not  less  rude,  but 
more  intellectually  vigorous,  and  more  featurely,  warriors  of 
Christian  chivalry,— and  to  substantiate  the  distinct  and  graceful 
profiles  or  outlines  of  the  Homeric  epic  into  the  flesh  and  blood 
of  the  romantic  drama— in  short,  to  give  a  grand  history-piece 
m  the  robust  style  of  Albert  Durer. 

The  character  of  Thersites,  in  particular,  well  deserves  a  more 
careful  examination,  as  the  Caliban  of  demagogic  life  ;— the  ad- 
mirable  portrait  of  intellectual  power  deserted°by  all 'grace,  all 
moral  principle,  all  not  momentary  impulse  ;— just  wise  enough 
to  detect  the  weak  head,  and  fool  enough  to  provoke  the  armed 
fist  of  his  betters  ;— one  whom  malcontent  Achilles  can  inveigle 
from  malcontent  Ajax,  under  the  one  condition,  that  he  shall  be 
called  on  to  do  nothing  but  abuse  and  slander,  and  that  he  shall 
be  allowed  to  abuse  as  much  and  as  purulently  as  he  likes,  that 
is  as  he  can  ;— in  short,  a  mule,— quarrelsome  by  the  original 


100  NOTES   ON   CORIOLANUS. 

discord  of  his  nature,-*  slave  by  tenure  of  his  own  baseness  - 
made  to  bray  and  be  brayed  at,  to  despise  and  be  despicable 
■  Ave,  Sir,  but  say  what  you  will,  he  is  a  very  clever  fellow, 
though  the  best  friends  will  fall  out.  There  was  a  time  when 
Aiaxthoueht  he  deserved  to  have  a  statue  of  gold  erected  to  him, 
and  handsome  Achilles,  at  the  head  of  the  Myrmidons,  gave  no 
little  credit  to  his  friend  Thersites  V 
<Vct  iv.  sc.  5.     Speech  of  Ulysses  : 

0,  these  encounter ers,  so  glib  of  tongue, 
That  give  a  coasting  welcome  ere  it  comes— 

Should  it  be  '  accosting  ?'  '  Accost  her,  knight,  accost !'  in  the 
Twelfth  Isio-ht.  Yet  there  sounds  a  something  so  Shakspenan 
in  the  phras°e-<  give  a  coasting  welcome,'  (<  coasti ng'  bein g  taken 
as  the  epithet  and  adjective  of  '  welcome,')  that  had  the  follow- 
ing words  been,  'ere  they  land;  instead  of  'ere  it  comes  I 
should  have  preferred  the  interpretation.  The  sense  now  is,  that 
give  welcome  to  a  salute  ere  it  comes.' 


CORIOLANUS. 

This  play  illustrates  the  wonderfully  philosophic  impartiality 
of  Shakspeare's  politics.  His  own  country's  history  furnished  him 
with  no  matter,  but  what  was  too  recent  to  be  devoted  to  patriot- 
ism Besides,  he  knew  that  the  instruction  of  ancient  history 
would  seem  more  dispassionate.  In  Coriolanus  and  Julius  Caesar, 
you  see  Shakspeare's  good-natured  laugh  at  mobs.  Compare  this 
with  Sir  Thomas  Browns  aristocracy  of  spirit. 
Act  i.  sc.  1.     Coriolanus'  speech: — 

He  that  depends 
Upon  your  favors,  swims  with  fins  of  lead, 
And  hews  down  oaks  with  rushes.     Hang  ye  1  Trust  j  e 

I  suspect  that  Shakspeare  wrote  it  transposed  ; 
Trust  ye  ?  Hang  ye  1 

lb.  sc.  10.     Speech  of  Aufidius  :— 

Mine  emulation 
Hath  not  that  honor  in't,  it  had  ;  for  where 


NOTES   ON   CORIOLANUS.  101 

I  thought  to  crush  him  in  an  equal  force, 

True  sword  to  sword;  I'll  potch  at  him  some  way, 

Or  wrath,  or  craft  may  get  him. — 

My  valor  (poison'd 
With  only  suffering  stain  by  him)  for  him 
Shall  fly  out  of  itself:  nor  sleep,  nor  sanctuary, 
Being  naked,  sick,  nor  fane,  nor  capitol, 
The  prayers  of  priests,  nor  times  of  sacrifices, 
Embankments  all  of  fury,  shall  lift  up 
Their  rotten  privilege  and  custom  'gainst 
My  hate  to  Marcius. 

■  I  have  such  deep  faith  in  Shakspeare's  heart-lore,  that  I  take 
for  granted  that  this  is  in  nature,  and  not  as  a  mere  anomaly; 
although  I  can  not  in  myself  discover  any  germ  of  possible  feel- 
ing, which  could  wax  and  unfold  itself  into  such  sentiment  as 
this.  However,  I  perceive  that  in  this  speech  is  meant  to  be  con- 
tained a  prevention  of  shock  at  the  after-change  in  Aufidius' 
character. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Speech  of  Menenius  :— 

The  most  sovereign  prescription  in  Galen,  &a. 

Was  it  without,  or  in  contempt  of,  historical  information  that 
bhakspeare  made  the  contemporaries  of  Coriolanus  quote  Cato 
and  Galen  ?      I  can  not  decide  to  my  own  satisfaction. 
Tb.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Coriolanus  :— 

Why  in  this  wolvish  gown  should  I  stand  here— 

That  the  gown  of  the  candidate  was  of  whitened  wool  we 
know.  Does  <  wolvish'  or  <  woolvish'  mean  •  made  of  wool  V  If 
it  means  «  wolfish,'  what  is  the  sense  ? 

Act  iv.  sc.  7.     Speech  of  Aufidi 


iius 


All  places  yield  to  him  ere  he.sits  down,  Ac. 

I  have  always  thought  this,  in  itself  so  beautiful  speech,  the 
least  explicable  from  the  mood  and  full  intention  of  the  speaker 
of  any  in  the  whole  works  of  Shakspeare.  I  cherish  the  hope 
that  I  am  mistaken,  and  that,  becoming  wiser,  I  shall  discover 
some  profound  excellence  in  that,  in  which  I  now  appear  to  de- 
tect an  imperfection. 


102  NOTES   ON   THE  JULIUS   C2ESAR. 


JULIUS   CAESAR. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Mar.  What  meanest  thou  by  that  ?     Mend  me,  thou  saucy  fellow ! 

The  speeches  of  Flavius  and  Marullus  are  in.  blank  verse. 
Wherever  regular  metre  can  be  rendered  truly  imitative  of  char- 
acter, passion,  or  personal  rank,  Shakspeare  seldom,  if  ever, 
neglects  it.     Hence  this  line  should  be  read  : — 

What  mean's t  by  that  ?  mend  me,  thou  saucy  fellow ! 

I  say  regular  metre  :   for  even  the  prose  has  in  the  highest  and 
lowest  dramatic  personage,  a  Cobbler  or  a  Hamlet,  a  rhythm  so 
felicitous  and  so  severally  appropriate,  as  to  be  a  virtual  metre, 
lb.  sc.  2. 

Bru.  A  soothsayer  bids  you  beware  the  Ides  of  March. 

If  my  ear  does  not  deceive  me,  the  metre  of  this  line  was  meant 
to  express  that  sort  of  mild  philosophic  contempt,  characterizing 
Brutus  even  in  his  first  casual  speech.  The  line  is  a  trimeter,— 
iach  dipodia  containing  two  accented  and  two  unaccented  sylla- 
bles, but  variously  arranged,  as  thus  : — 

A  soothsayer  |  bids  you  beware  |  the  Ides  of  March. 

lb.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

Set  honor  in  one  eye,  and  death  i'  the  other, 
And  I  will  look  on  both  indifferently. 

Warburton  would  read  '  death'  for  '  both  ;'  but  I  prefer  the  old 
text.  There  are  here  three  things,  the  public  good,  the  individual 
Brutus'  honor,  and  his  death.  The  latter  two  so  balanced  each 
other,  that  he  could  decide  for  the  first  by  equipoise  ;  nay — the 
thought  growing — that  honor  had  more  weight  than  death.  That 
Cassius  understood  it  as  "Warburton,  is  the  beauty  of  Cassius  as 
contrasted  with  Brutus. 

lb.     Caesar's  speech  : — 

He  loves  no  plays, 
As  thou  dost,  Antony  ;  he  hears  no  music,  &c. 

This  is  not  a  trivial  obser  vation,  nor  does  our  poet  mean  barely  by  it, 
that  Cassius  was  not  a  merr  r ,  sprightly  man ;  but  that  he  had  not  a  due 
temperament  of  harmony  in  his  disposition.     Theobald's  Note. 


NOTES  ON  JULIUS   CESAR.  103 

0  Theobald  !  what  a  commentator  wast  thou,  when  thou 
vvouldst  affect  to  understand  Shakspeare,  instead  of  contenting 
thyself  with  collating  the  text  !  The  meaning  here  is  too  deep 
for  a  line  ten-fold  the  length  of  thine  to  fathom. 

lb.  sc.  3.     Casca's  speech : 

Be  factious  for  redress  of  all  these  griefs; 
And  I  will  set  this  foot  of  mine  as  far, 
As  who  goes  farthest. 

1  understand  it  thus  :  '  You  have  spoken  as  a  conspirator ;  be 
so  in.  fact,  and  I  will  join  you.  Act  on  your  principles,  and  real- 
ize them  in  a  fact.' 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

It  must  be  by  his  death  ;  and,  for  my  part, 

I  know  no  personal  cause  to  spurn  at  him, 

But  for  the  general.     He  would  be  crown'd  : 

How  that  might  change  his  nature,  there's  the  question. 

And,  to  speak  truth  of  Caesar, 

I  have  not  known  when  his  affections  sway'd 
More  than  his  reason. 

So  Caesar  may  ; 

Then,  lest  he  may,  prevent. 

This  speech  is  singular  ;^ — at  least,  I  do  not  at  present  see  into 
Shakspeare's  motive,  his  rationale,  or  in  what  point  of  view  he 
meant  Brutus'  character  to  appear.  For  surely — (this,  I  mean, 
is  what  I  say  to  myself,  with  my  present  quantum  of  insight, 
only  modified  by  my  experience  in  how  many  instances  I  have 
ripened  into  a  perception  of  beauties,  where  I  had  before  descried 
faults) — surely,  nothing  can  seem  more  discordant  with  our  his- 
torical preconceptions  of  Brutus,  or  more  lowering  to  the  intellect 
of  the  Stoico-Platonic  tyrannicide,  than  the  tenets  here  attributed 
to  him — to  him,  the  stern  Roman  republican  ;  namely, — that  he 
would  have  no  objection  to  a  king,  or  to  Caesar,  a  monarch  in 
Rome,  would  C«sar  but  be  as  good  a  monarch  as  he  now  seems 
disposed  to  be  !  How,  too,  could  Brutus  say  that  he  found  no 
personal  cause — none  in  Caesar's  past  conduct  as  a  man  ?  Had 
he  not  passed  the  Rubicon  ?  Had  he  not  entered  Home  as  a  con- 
queror ?  Had  he  not  placed  his  Gauls  in  the  Senate  ? — Shaks- 
peare, it  may  be  said,  has  not  brought  these  things  forward — 
True  ; — and  this  is  just  the  ground  of  my  perplexity.  What 
character  did  Shakspeare  mean  his  Brutus  to  be  ? 


104  NOTES  ON  JULIUS  (LESAR. 

lb.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

For  if  thou  path  thy  native  semblance  on- 

Surely,  there  need  be  no  scruple  in  treating  this  '  path'  as  a 
mere  misprint  or  mis-script  for  '  put.'  In  what  place  does 
Shakspeare, — where  does  any  other  writer  of  the  same  age — use 
'  path'  as  a  verb  for  '  walk  ?'  (r) 

lb.  sc.  2.     Caesar's  speech  : — 

She  dreamt  last  night  she  saw  my  statue — 

No  doubt,  it  should  be  statua,  as  in  the  same  age,  they  more 
often  pronounced  '  heroes'  as  a  trisyllable  than  dissyllable.  A 
modern  tragic  poet  would  have  written, — 

Last  night  she  dreamt,  that  she  my  statue  saw — 

JBut  Shakspeare  never  avails  himself  of  the  supposed  license  of 
transposition,  merely  for  the  metre.     There  is  always  some  logic 
either  of  thought  or  passion  to  justify  it. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1.     Antony's  speech  : — 

Pardon  me,  Julius — here  wast  thou  bay'd,  brave  hart ; 
Here  didst  thou  fall ;  and  here  thy  hunters  stand 
Sign'd  in  thy  spoil,  and  crimson'd  in  thy  death. 
0  world!  thou  toast  the  forest  to  this  hart, 
And  this,  indeed,  0  world!  the  heart  of  thee. 

I  doubt  the  genuineness  of  the  last  two  lines  ; — not  because  they 
are  vile  ;  but  first,  on  account  of  the  rhythm,  which  is  not  Shaks- 
perian,  but  just  the  very  tune  of  some  old  play,  from  which  the 
actor  might  have  interpolated  them  ;  and  secondly,  because  they 
interrupt,  not  only  the  sense  and  connection,  but  likewise  the 
flow  both  of  the  passion,  and  (what  is  with  me  still  more  decisive) 
of  the  Shaksperian  link  of  association.  As  with  many  another 
parenthesis  or  gloss  slipt  into  the  text,  we  have  only  to  read 
the  passage  without  it,  to  see  that  it  never  was  in  it.  I  ven- 
ture to  say  there  is  no  instance  in  Shakspeare  fairly  like  this. 
Conceits  he  has  ;  but  they  not  only  rise  out  of  some  word 
in  the  lines  before,  but  also  lead  to  the  thought  in  the  lines 
following.  .  Here  the  conceit  is  a  mere  alien  :  Antony  forgets  an 
image,  when  he  is  even  touching  it,  and  then  recollects  it,  when 
the  thought  last  in  his  mind  must  have  led  him  away  from  it 


NOTES  ON  ANTONY  AND   CLEOPATEA.  105 

A?t  iv.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

What,  shall  one  of  us, 

That  struck  the  foremost  man  of  all  this  "world, 
But  for  supporting  robbers. 

This  seemingly  strange  assertion  of  Brutus  is  unhappily  veri- 
fied in  the  present  day.  What  is  an  immense  army,  in  which 
the  lust  of  plunder  has  quenched  all  the  duties  of  the  citizen, 
other  than  a  horde  of  robbers,  or  differenced  only  as  fiends  are 
from  ordinarily  reprobate  men  ?  Csesar  supported,  and  was  sup- 
ported by,  such  as  these  ;  and  even  so  Bonaparte  in  our  days. 

I  know  no  part  of  Shakspeare  that  more  impresses  on  me  the 
belief  of  his  genius  being  superhuman,  than  this  scene  between 
Brutus  and  Cassius.  In  the  Gnostic  heresy  it  might  have  been 
credited  with  less  absurdity  than  most  of  their  dogmas,  that  the 
Supreme  had  employed  him  to  create,  previously  to  his  function 
of  representing,  characters. 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA. 

Shakspeare  can  be  complimented  only  by  comparison  with  him- 
self :  all  other  eulogies  are  either  heterogeneous,  as  when  they 
are  in  reference  to  Spenser  or  Milton  ;  or  they  are  flat  truisms, 
as  when  he  is  gravely  preferred  to  Corneille,  Racine,  or  even  his 
own  immediate  successors,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Massinger 
and  the  rest.  The  highest  praise,  or  rather  form  of  praise,  of 
this  play,  which  I  can  offer  in  my  own  mind,  is  the  doubt  which 
the  perusal  always  occasions  in  me,  whether  the  Antony  and 
Cleopatra  is  not,  in  all  exhibitions  of  a  giant  power  in  its  strength 
and  vigor  of  maturity,  a  formidable  rival  of  Macbeth,  Lear, 
Hamlet,  and  Othello.  Feliciter  audax  is  the  motto  for  its  style 
comparatively  with  that  of  Shakspeare's  other  works,  even  as  it 
is  the  general  motto  of  all  his  works  compared  with  those  of  other 
poets.  Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  this  happy  valiancy  of  style 
is  but  the  representative  and  result  of  all  the  material  excellences 
so  expressed. 

This  play  should  be  peru.sed  in  mental  contrast  with  Romeo 
and  Juliet ; — as  the  love  of  passion  and  appetite  opposed  to  the 
love  of  affection  and  instinct.  But  the  art  displayed  in  the  char- 
is* 


106  NOTES  ON  ANTONY  AND   CLEOPATEA. 

acter  of  Cleopatra  is  profound  ;  in  this,  especially,  that  the  sense 
of  criminality  in  her  passion  is  lessened  by  our  insight  into  its 
depth  and  energy,  at  the  very  moment  that  we  can  not  but  per- 
ceive that  the  passion  itself  springs  out  of  the  habitual  craving 
of  a  licentious  nature,  and  that  it  is  supported  and  reinforced  by 
voluntary  stimulus  and  sought-for  associations,  instead  of  blossom- 
ing out  of  spontaneous  emotion. 

Of  all  Shakspeare's  historical  plays,  Antony  and  Cleopatra  ii 
by  far  the  most  wonderful.  There  is  not  one  in  which  he  has 
followed  history  so  minutely,  and  yet  there  are  few  in  which  he 
impresses  the  notion  of  angelic  strength  so  much  ; — perhaps  none 
in  which  he  impresses  it  more  strongly.  This  is  greatly  owing 
to  the  manner  in  which  the  fiery  force  is  sustained  throughout, 
and  to  the  numerous  momentary  flashes  of  nature  counteracting 
the  historic  abstraction.  As  a  wonderful  specimen  of  the  way  in 
which  Shakspeare  lives  up  to  the  very  end  of  this  play,  read  the 
last  part  of  the  concluding  scene.  And  if  you  would  feel  the 
judgment  as  well  as  the  genius  of  Shakspeare  in  your  heart's  core 
compare  this  astonishing  drama  with  .Dryden's  All  For  Love 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Philo's  speech  : 

His  captain's  heart 
Which  in  the  scuffles  of  great  fights  hath  burst 
The  buckles  on  his  breast,  reneges  all  temper — 

It  should  be  '  reneagues,'  or  '  reniegues,'  as  '  fatigues,'  &c. 

Tb. 

Take  but  good  note,  and  you  shall  see  in  him 
The  triple  pillar  of  the  world  transform'd 
Into  a  strumpet's  fool. 

Warburton's  conjecture  of  '  stool'  is  ingenious,  and  would  be  a 
probable  reading,  if  the  scene  opening  had  discovered  Antony  with 
Cleopatra  on  his  lap.  But,  represented  as  he  is  walking  and 
jesting  with  her,  '  fool'  must  be  the  word.  "Warburton's  objec- 
tion is  shallow,  and  implies  that  he  confounded  the  dramatic  with 
the  epic  style.  The  '  pillar'  of  a  state  is  so  common  a  metaphor, 
as  to  have  lost  the  image  in  the  thing  meant  to  be  imaged, 
lb.  sc.  2. 

Much  is  breeding ; 

Which,  like  the  courser's  hair,  hath  yet  but  life. 

And  not  a  serpent's  poison. 


:notes  on  timon  of  athens.  107 

This  is  so  far  true  to  appearance,  that  a  horse-hair,  '  laid,'  as 
Hollinshed  says,  '  in  a  pail  of  water,'  will  become  the  supporter 
of  seemingly  one  worm,  though  probably  of  an  immense  number 
of  small  slimy  water-lice.  The  hair  will  twirl  round  a  finger, 
and  sensibly  compress  it.  It  is  a  common  experiment  with 
school-boys  in  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland. 

Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Enobarbus  : — 

Her  gentlewomen,  like  the  Nereids, 
So  many  mermaids,  tended  her  i'  th'  eyes, 
And  made  their  bends  adornings.     At  the  helm 
A  seeming  mermaid  steers. 

I  have  the  greatest  difficulty  in  believing  that  Shakspeare  wrote 
the  first  '  mermaids.'  He  never,  I  think,  would  have  so  weak- 
ened by  useless  anticipation  the  fine  image  immediately  follow- 
ing. The  epithet  '  seeming'  becomes  so  extremely  improper 
after  the  whole  number  had  been  positively  called  •  so  many 
mermaids.' 


TIMON  OF  ATHENS. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Tim.  The  man  is  honest. 

Old  Ath.  Therefore  he  will  be,  Timon. 

His  honesty  rewards  him  in  itself. 

Warburton's  comment — '  If  the  man  be  honest,  for  that  reason 
he  will  be  so  in  this,  and  not  endeavor  at  the  injustice  of  gaining 
my  daughter  without  my  consent' — is,  like  almost  all  his  com- 
ments, ingenious  in  blunder  :  he  can  never  see  any  other  writer's 
thoughts  for  the  mist-working  swarm  of  his  own.  The  meaning 
of  the  first  line  the  poet  himself  explains,  or  rather  unfolds,  in 
the  second.  '  The  man  is  honest !' — True  ; — and  for  that  very 
cause,  and  with  no  additional  or  extrinsic  motive,  he  will  be  so. 
No  man  can  be  justly  called  honest,  who  is  not  so  for  honesty's 
sake,  itself  including  its  own  reward.  Note,  that  '  honesty'  in 
Shakspeare's  age  retained  much  of  its  old  dignity,  and  that  con- 
tradistinction of  the  honestum  from  the  utile,  in  which  its  very 
essence  and  definition  consist.  If  it  be  honestum,  it  can  not  de- 
pend on  the  utile. 


J  08  NOTES    ON  TIMON   OF  ATHENS. 

lb.  Speech  of  Apemantus,  printed  as  prose  in  Theobald's 
edition  : — 

So,  so  !  aches  contract,  and  starve  your  supple  joints  I 

I  may  remark  here  the  fineness  of  Shakspeare's  sense  of  musi- 
cal period,  which  would  almost  by  itself  have  suggested  (if  the 
hundred  positive  proofs  had  not  been  extant)  that  the  word 
*  aches'  was  then  ad  libitum,  a  dissyllable — aitches.  For  read 
it,  *  aches,'  in  this  sentence,  and  I  would  challenge  you  to  find 
any  period  in  Shakspeare's  writings  vith  the  same  musical,  or 
rather  dissonant,  notation.  Try  the  one,  and  then  the  other,  by  your 
ear,  reading  the  sentence  aloud,  first  with  the  word  as  a  dissyl- 
lable and  then  as  a  monosyllable,  and  you  will  feel  what  I  mean.* 

lb.  sc.  2.     Cupid's  speech  :  "Warburton's  correction  of — 

There  taste,  touch,  all  pleas'd  from  thy  table  rise — 

Th'  ear,  taste,  touch,  smell,  <fec. 

This  is  indeed  an  excellent  emendation. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Senator's  speech  : — 

— nor  then  silenc'd  "with 
"  Commend  me  to  your  master" — and  the  cap 
Plays  in  the  right  hand,  thus : — 

Either,  methinks,  •  plays'  should  be  '  play'd,'  or  ■  and'  should 
be  changed  to  (  while.'  I  can  certainly  understand  it  as  a 
parenthesis,  an  interadditive  of  scorn  ;  but  it  does  no*  sound  to 
my  ear  as  in  Shakspeare's  manner. 

lb.  sc.  2.     Timon's  speech  (Theobald)  : 

And  that  unaptness  made  you  minister, 
Thus  to  excuse  yourself. 

Read  your ; — at  least  I  can  not  otherwise  understand  the  line. 
You  made  my  chance  indisposition  and  occasional  unaptness  youj 
minister — that  is,  the  ground  on  which  you  now  excuse  your- 

*  Ii  is,  of  course,  a  verse, — 

Aches  contract,  and  starve  your  supple  joints, — 
and  is  so  printed  in  all  later  editions.     But  Mr.  C.  was  reading  it  in  prosa 
in  Theobald ;  and  it  is  curious  to  see  how  his  ear  detected  the  rhythmic 
necessity  for  pronouncing  "aches"  as  a  dissyllable,  although  the  metric 
necessity  seems  for  the  moment  to  have  escaped  him. — Ed, 


NOTES   ON  TIMON   OF  ATHENS.  iOtf 

self.  Or,  perhaps,  no  correction  is  necessary,  if  we  construe 
\  made  you'  as  *  did  you  make  ;'  '  and  that  unaptness  did  you 
make  help  you  thus  to  excuse  yourself.'  But  the  former  seems 
more  in  Shakspeare's  manner,  and  is  less  liable  to  be  misunder- 
stood.^ 

Act  iii.  sc.  3.     Servant's  speech  : — 

How  fairly  this  lord  strives  to  appear  foul ! — takes  virtuous  copies  to 
be  wicked;  like  those  that  under  hot,  ardent  zeal  would,  set  whole  realms  on 
fire.     Of  such  a  nature  is  his  politic  love. 

This  latter  clause  I  grievously  suspect  to  have  been  an  addition 
of  the  players,  which  had  hit,  and,  being  constantly  applauded, 
procured  a  settled  occupancy  in  the  prompter's  copy.  Not  that 
Shakspeare  does  not  elsewhere  sneer  at  the  Puritans ;  but  here  A 
is  introduced  so  nolenter  volenter  (excuse  the  phrase)  by  the  head 
and  shoulders  ! — and  is  besides  so  much  more  likely  to  ha^e  been 
conceived  in  the  age  of  Charles  I. 

Act  iv.  sc.  2.     Timon's  speech  : — 

Raise  me  this  beggar,  aud  deny't  that  lord. — 

Warburton  reads  'denude.' 

I  can  not  see  the  necessity  of  this  alteration.  The  editors  and 
commentators  are,  all  of  them,  ready  enough  to  cry  cut  against 
Shakspeare's  laxities  and  licenses  of  style,  forgetting  that  he  is 
not  merely  a  poet,  but  a  dramatic  poet ;  that,  when  the  head  and 
the  heart  are.  swelling  with  fulness,  a  man  does  not  ask  himself 
whether  he  has  grammatically  arranged,  hut  only  whether  (the 
context  taken  in)  he  has  conveyed,  his  meaning.  '  Deny'  is  here 
clearly  equal  to  'withhold  ;'  and  the  'it,'  quite  in  ths  genius  of 
vehement  conversation,  which  a  syntaxist  explains  by  ellipses 
and  subauditurs  in  a  Greek  or  Latin  classic,  yet  triumphs  over 
as  ignorances  in  a  contemporary,  refers  to  accidental  and  artificial 
rank  or  elevation,  implied  in  the  verb  'raise.'  Besides,  does  the 
word  'denude'  occur  in  any  writer  before,  or  of,  Shakspeare's 
ige? 

*  '  Your'  is  the  received  reading  now. — Ed. 


110  NOTES  ON  EOMEO  AND  JULIET. 


ROMEO   AND  JULIET. 

I  have  previously  had  occasion  to  speak  at  large  on  the  subject 
of  the  three  unities  of  time,  place,  and  action,  as  applied  to  the 
drama  in  the  abstract,  and  to  the  particular  stage  for  which 
Shakspeare  wrote,  as  far  as  he  can  be  said  to  have  written  for 
any  stage  but  that  of  the  universal  mind.  I  hope  I  have  in  some 
measure  succeeded  in  demonstrating  that  the  former  two,  instead 
of  being  rules,  were  mere  inconveniences  attached  to  the  local 
peculiarities  of  the  Athenian  drama  ;  that  the  last.alone  deserved 
the  name  of  a  principle,  and  that  in  the  preservation  of  this 
unity  Shakspeare  stood  pre-eminent.  Yet,  instead  of  unity  of 
action,  I  should  greatly  prefer  the  more  appropriate,  though 
scholastic  and  uncouth,  words  homogeneity,  proportionateness, 
and  totality  of  interest, — expressions,  which  involve  the  distinc- 
tion, or  rather  the  essential  difference,  betwixt  the  shaping  skill 
of  mechanical  talent,  and  the  creative,  productive,  life-power  of 
inspired  genius.  In  the  former  each  part  is  separately  conceived, 
and  then  by  a  succeeding  act  put  together  ; — not  as  watches  are 
made  for  wholesale — (for  there  each  part  supposes  a  pre-concep- 
tion  of  the  whole  in  some  mind), — but  more  like  pictures  on  a 
motley  screen.  "Whence  arises  the  harmony  that  strikes  us  in 
the  wildest  natural  landscapes, — in  the  relative  shapes  of  rocks, 
the  harmony  of  colors  in  the  heaths,  ferns,  and  lichens,  the  leaves 
of  the  beech  and  the  oak,  the  stems  and  rich  brown  branches  of 
the  birch  and  other  mountain  trees,  varying  from  verging  autumn 
to  returning  spring, — compared  with  the  visual  effect  from  the 
greater  number  of  artificial  plantations  ? — From  this,  that  the 
natural  landscape  is  effected,  as  it  were,  by  a  single  energy  modi- 
fied ab  intra  in  each  component  part.  And  as  this  is  the  particu- 
lar excellence  of  the  Shaksperian  drama  generally,  so  is  it  espe- 
cially characteristic  of  the  Romeo  and  Juliet. 

The  groundwork  of  the  tale  is  altogether  in  family  life,  and  the 
events  of  the  play  have  their  first  origin  in  family  feuds.  Filmy 
as  are  the  eyes  of  party-spirit,  at  once  dim  and  truculent,  still 
there  is  commonly  some  real  or  supposed  object  in  view,  or  prin- 
ciple to  be  maintained  ;  and  though  but  the  twisted  wires  on  the 
plate  of  rosin  in  the  preparation  for  electrical  pictures,  it  is  still 
a  guide  in  some  degree,  an  assimilation  to  an  outline.      But  in 


NOTES  ON  EOMEO  AND  JULIET.  113 

lis  q7fs'  whf w  proved  scarce]y iess  ^°*»»  *<» 

states,  wilfulness,  and  precipitancy,  and  passion  from  mere  habit 
and  custom,  can  alone  be  expected.  With  his  accustomed  judo- 
men  Shakspeare  has  begun  by  placing  before  us  a  lively  picture 
of  all  the  impulses  of  the  play ;  and,  as  nature  ever  presents  two 
sides,  one  for  Herachtus,  and  one  for  Democritus,  he  has,  by  way 
of  prelude,  shown  the  laughable  absurdity  of  the  evil  by  the  con- 
tagion of  it  reaching  the  servants,  who  have  so  little  to  do  with 
it,  but  who  arc  under  the  necessity  of  letting  the  superfluity  of 
sensorial  power  fly  off  through  the  escape-valve  of  wit-combats, 
and  of  quam fling  Wlth  weapons  of  sharper  ^       ^  ^ 

mutation  of  their  masters.  Yet  there  is  a  sort  of  unhired  fidelity. 
an  ourtshness  about  all  this  that  makes  it  rest  pleasant  on  onJs 
teelmgs.  All  the  first  scene,  down  to  the  conclusion  of  the 
Prince  s  speech,  is  a  motley  dance  of  all  ranks  and  ages  to  one 
tune,  as  if  the  horn  of  Huon  had  been  playing  behind  the  scenes 
.Benvolio  s  speech — 

Madam,  an  hour  before  the  worshiped  sun 
Peer'd  forth  the  golden  window  of  the  east— 

and,  far  more  strikingly,  the  following  speech  of  old  Montague- 
Many  a  morning  hath  he  there  beeu  seen 
With  tears  augmenting  the  fresh  morniDg  dew— 

prove  that  Shakspeare  meant  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  to  approach 
to  a  poem,  which  and  indeed  its  early  date,  may  be  also  inferred 
from  the  multitude  of  rhyming  couplets  throughout.  And  if  we 
are  right,  from  the  internal  evidence,  in  pronouncing  this  one  of 
Shakspeare  s  early  dramas,  it  affords   a  strong  instance  of  the 

fsni„nternd  T  Tgf  T  \he  "atUre  °f  *he  Passions' that  ^meo 
is  mtioduced  already  love-bewildered.  The  necessity  of  levins 
creates  an  object  for  itself  in  man  and  woman;  and  yet  there  if 
a  difference  in  this  respect  between  the  sexes,  though  only  to  be 
JubWh  7,  i  PerCepti°n  °f  ;t     ft  WOuId  W  4lease  d  us  if 

he !  f      w  represef ed  as  already in  love'  °r  as  6»W 

herself  so  -but  no  one,  I  believe,  ever  experiences  any  shock  at 
Romeo  s  forgetting  his  Rosaline,  who  had  been  a  mere  name  for 
the  yearning  of  his  youthful  imagination,  and  rushine  into  bis 
passion  for  Juliet.  Rosaline  was  a  mere  creation  cf  hk  fancy 
and  we  should  remark  the  boastful  positiveness  of  Romeo  in  a 


112  NOTES  ON  ROMEO  AND  JOL1ET. 

love  of  his  own  making,  which  is  never  shown  where  love  is 

really  near  the  heart. 

When  the  devout  religion  of  mine  eye 

Maintaius  such  falsehood.^  turn  tears  to  fires  I 

Oue'fairer  than  my  lore  !  the  all-seeing  sun 
Neer  saw  her  match,  since  first  fts  world  begun. 

The  eharaeter  of  the  Nurse  is  the  nearest  of  any  thing  in  Shak- 
1 t„  a  direct  borrowing  from  mere  observation ;  and  the  rea- 
rt   hat  a  infancy  and  childhood  the  individual  in  nature 
^a  representative  of  a  elass.-just  as  in  describing  one  larch- 
tree  yon  generalize  a  grove  of  them^so  it  rs  nearly ^as  much  so 
nod  a-e     The  generalization  is  done  to  the  poet's  hand.    Here 
™  ha"  e  the  garrulity  of  age  strengthened  by  the  feelings  of  a 
oTgtusted  servant/whose  sympathy  with  the  mother  s  affec- 
tions gives  her  privileges  and  rank  m  the  household    and  observe 
he  mode  of  connection  by  accidents  of  tune  and  place,  and  the 
child-like  fondness  of  repetition  in  a  second  clnldhood,  and  also 
£  happy,   humble,   ducking  under,  yet   constant   resurgence 
against,  the  check  of  her  superiors  !— 

Yes,  madam  1-Yet  I  can  not  choose  but  laugh,  Ac. 

In  the  fourth  scene  we  have  Mercutio  introduced  to  m     0 

how  shall  I  describe  that  exquisite  ebullience  and  overflow  ol 

youthful  life,  wafted  on  over  the  laughing  waves  of  pleasure  an i 

prosp  ri  y,  as  a  wanton  beauty  that  distorts  the  face  on  which, 

!he  know   her  lover  is  gazing  enraptured,  and  wrinkles  her  fore- 

W  in  the  triumph  of  its  smoothness !     Wit  ever  wakeful  fanej 

busy  and  procreative  as  an  insect,  courage,  an  easy  mind    na„ 

without  cadres  of  its  own,  is  at  once  disposed  to ; laugh ^away  ui< >  e 

of  others,  and  yet  to  be  interested  ,n  them.-taese  and  .U con 

gonial  qualities,  melting  into  the  eommon  copula  o  them  all  ite 

Lan  of  rank  and  the  gentleman,  with  all  its  excellences  and  al 

it.  weaknesses,  constitute  the  character  of  Mercutio  . 

Act  i.  SC.  5. 

Tyb.  It  fits  when  such  a  villain  is  a  guest ; 
I'll  not  endure  him. 

Cap.  He  shall  be  endur'd.  "  ■ 

What,  goodman  boy  l-I  say,  he  shall  :-Go  to  ;- 
Am  I  the  master  here,  or  you  ?— Go  to. 


NOTES   ON   EOMEO   AND   JULIET.  U8 

You'll  not  endure  him ! — God  shall  mend  my  soul— 
You'll  make  a  mutiny  among  my  guests ! 
Tou  will  set  cock-a-hoop  !  you'll  be  the  man  I 

Tyb.  Why,  uncle,  'tis  a  shame. 

Gap.  Go  to,  go  to, 
You  are  a  saucy  boy !  &c. — 

How  admirable  is  the  old  man's  impetuosity  at  once  contrast- 
ing, yet  harmonized,  with  young  Tybalt's  quarrelsome  violence  ! 
But  it  would  be  endless  to  repeat  observations  of  this  sort.  Every 
leaf  is  different  on  an  oak-tree  ;  but  still  we  can  only  say — our 
tongues  defrauding  our  eyes — '  This  is  another  oak-leaf !' 

Act  ii.  sc.  2.     The  garden  scene  : 

Take  notice  in  this  enchanting  scene  of  the  contrast  of  Romeo's 
love  with  his  former  fancy  ;  and  weigh  the  skill  shown  in  justi- 
fying him  from  his  inconstancy  by  making  us  feel  the  difference 
of  his  passion.  Yet  this,  too,  is  a  love  in,  although  not  merelv 
of,  the  imagination. 

lb. 

Jul.  "Well,  do  not  swear  ;  although  I  joy  in  thee, 
I  have  no  joy  in  this  contract  to-night : 
It  is  too  rash,  too  unadvis'd,  too  sudden,  &c. 

"With  love,  pure  love,  there  is  always  an  anxiety  for  the  safety 
of  the  object,  a  disinterestedness,  by  which  it  is  distinguished 
from  the  counterfeits  of  its  name.  Compare  this  scene  with  act 
iii.  sc.  1,  of  the  Tempest.  I  do  not  know  a  more  wonderful  in- 
stance of  Shakspeare's  mastery  in  playing  a  distinctly  remembera- 
ble  variety  on  the  same  remembered  air,  than  in  the  transporting 
love  confessions  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  and  Ferdinand  and  Miranda. 
There  seems  more  passion  in  the  one,  and  more  dignity  in  the 
other ;  yet  you  feel  that  the  sweet  girlish  lingering  and  busy 
movement  of  Juliet,  and  the  calmer  and  more  maidenly  fondness 
of  Miranda,  might  easily  pass  into  each  other. 

lb.  sc.  3.     The  Friar's  speech  : — 

The  reverend  character  of  the  Friar,  like  all  Shakspeare's  rep- 
resentations of  the  great  professions,  is  very  delightful  and  tran- 
quillizing, yet  it  is  no  digression,  but  immediately  necessary  to  the 
carrying  on  of  the  plot. 

lb.  sc.  4. 

Rom.    Good-morrow  to  you  both.     What  counterfeit  did  I  give  you  ?  <fec 


114  NOTES  ON  ROMEO  AND  JULIET. 

Compare  again,  Romeo's  half-exerted,  and  half  real,  ease  of 
mind  with  his  first  manner  when  in  love  with  Rosaline  !  His 
will  had  come  to  the  clenching  point. 

Tb.  sc.  6. 

Rom.  Do  thou  but  close  our  hands  with  holy  words, 
Then  love-devouring  death  do  what  he  dare, 
It  is  enough  I  may  but  call  her  mine. 

The  precipitancy,  which  is  the  character  of  the  play,  is  well 
marked  in  this  short  scene  of  waiting  for  Juliet's  arrival. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

Mer.  No.  'tis  not  so  deep  as  a  well,  nor  so  wide  as  a  church-door ;  but 
'tis  enough :  'twill  serve  t  ask  for  me  to-morrow,  and  you  shall  find  me  a 
grave  man,  &c. 

How  hue  an  effect  the  wit  and  raillery  habitual  to  Mercutio, 
even  struggling  with  his  pain,  give  to  Romeo's  following  speech, 
and  at  the  same  time  so  completely  justifying  his  passionate  re- 
venge on  Tybalt ! 

Tb.     Benvolio's  speech  : 

But  that  he  tilts 
With  piercing  steel  at  bold  Mercutio's  breast. 

This  small  portion  of  untruth  in  Benvolio's  narrative  is  finely 
oonceived. 

Tb.  sc.  2.     Juliet's  speech  : 

For  thou  wilt  he  upon  the  wings  of  night 
Whiter  than  new  snow  on  a  raven's  back. — 

Indeed  the  whole  of  this  speech  is  imagination  strained  to  the 
highest ;  and  observe  the  blessed  effect  on  the  purity  of  the  mind. 
What  would  Dryden  have  made  of  it  ? — 

lb. 

JVurse.  Shame  come  to  Romeo. 
Jul.  Blister'd  be  thy  tongue 
For  such  a  wish ! 

Note  the  Nurse's  mistake  of  the  mind's  audible  struggles  with 
itself  for  its  decision  in  toto. 
lb.  sc.  3.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

'Tis  torture,  and  not  mercy :  heaven's  here, 
Where  Juliet  lives,  <fcc. 


NOTES   ON  ROMEO  AND  JULIET.  115 

All  deep  passions  are  a  sort  of  atheists,  that  believe  no  fu- 
ture, 
lb.  sc.  5. 

Cap.  Soft,  take  me  with  you,  take  me  with  you,  wife — 
How !  will  she  none  ?  &e. 

A  noble  scene  !  Don't  I  see  it  with  my  own  eyes  ? — Yes  !  but 
not  with  Juliet's.  And  observe  in  Capulet's  last  speech  in  this 
scene  his  mistake,  as  if  love's  causes  were  capable  of  being  gen- 
eralized. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Juliet's  speech  : — 

0,  look !  methinks  I  see  my  cousin's  ghost 
Seeking  out  Romeo,  that  did  spit  his  body 
Upon  a  rapier's  point : — Stay,  Tybalt,  stay ! — 
Romeo,  I  come !  this  do  I  drink  to  thee. 

Shakspeare  provides  for  the  finest  decencies.  It  would  have 
been  too  bold  a  thing  for  a  girl  of  fifteen  ; — but  she  swallows  the 
draught  in  a  fit  of  fright,  (s.) 

lb.  sc.  5. 

As  the  audience  know  that  Juliet  is  not  dead,  this  scene  is, 
perhaps,  excusable.  But  it  is  a  strong  warning  to  minor  drama- 
tists not  to  introduce  at  one  time  many  separate  characters  agi- 
tated by  one  and  the  same  circumstance.  It  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand what  effect,  whether  that  of  pity  or  of  laughter,  Shaks- 
peare meant  to  produce  ; — the  occasion  and  the  characteristic 
speeches  are  so  little  in  harmony !  For  example,  what  the  Nurse 
says  is  excellently  suited  to  the  Nurse's  character,  but  grotesquely 
unsuited  to  the  occasion. 

Act  v.  sc.  1.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

0  mischief!  thou  art  swift 
To  enter  in  the  thoughts  of  desperate  men ! 
I  do  remember  an  apothecary,  &c. 

This  famous  passage  is  so  beautiful  as  to  be  self-justified ;  yet. 
in  addition,  what  a  fine  preparation  it  is  for  the  tomb  scene  ! 
lb.  sc.  3.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

Good  gentle  youth,  tempt  not  a  desperate  man, 
Fly  hence  and  leave  me. 

The  gentleness  of  Romeo  was  shown  before,  as  softei  ed  by 


11C  SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH 

love  ;  and  now  it  is  doubled  by  love  and  sorrow  and  awe  of  the 
place  where  he  is. 

lb.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

How  oft  when  men  are  at  the  point  of  death 
Have  they  been  merry  1  which  their  keepers  call 
A  lightning  before  death.     O,  how  may  I 
Call  this  a  lightning  ?— 0,  my  love,  my  wife !  <fec. 

Here,  here,  is  the  master  example  how  beauty  can  at  once  in- 
crease and  modify  passion ! 

lb.  Last  scene. 

How  beautiful  is  the  close  !  The  spring  and  the  winter  meet ; 
winter  assumes  the  character  of  spring,  and  spring  the  sadness 
of  winter. 


SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH  HISTORICAL  PLAYS. 

The  first  form  of  poetry  is  the  epic,  the  essence  of  which  may 
be  stated  as  the  successive  in  events  and  characters.  This  must 
be  distinguished  from  narration,  in  which  there  must  always  be  a 
narrator,° from  whom  the  objects  represented  receive  a  coloring 
and  a  manner ;— whereas  in  the  epic,  as  in  the  so-called  poems 
of  Homer,  the  whole  is  completely  objective,  and  the  representa- 
tion is  a  pure  reflection.  The  next  form  into  which  poetry  passed 
was  the  dramatic  ;— both  forms  having  a  common  basis  with  a 
certain  difference,  and  that  difference  not  consisting  in  the  dia- 
logue alone.  Both  are  founded  on  the  relation  of  providence  to 
the  human  will ;  and  this  relation  is  the  universal  element,  ex- 
pressed under  different  points  of  view  according  to  the  difference 
of  religion,  and  the  moral  and  intellectual  cultivation  of  different 
nations.  In  the  epic  poem  fate  is  represented  as  overruling  the 
will,  and  making  it  instrumental  to  the  accomplishment  of  its 

designs  : —  ,■„',> 

Atbg  d£  reAeiero  povArj. 

In  the  drama,  the  will  is  exhibited  as  struggling  with  fate,  a 
great  and  beautiful  instance  and  illustration  of  which  is  the  Pro- 
metheus of  JEschylus  ;  and  the  deepest  effect  is  produced,  when 
the  fate  is  represented  as  a  higher  and  intelligent  will,  and  the 
opposition  of  the  individual  as  springing  from  a  defect. 


HISTORICAL  PLAYS.  m 

In  order  that  a  drama  maybe  properly  historical,  it  is  neces- 
sary  that  it  should  be  the  history  of  the  people  to  whom  it  is  ad- 
dressed.     In  the  composition,   care  must  be  taken  that  there 
appear  no  dramatic  improbability,  as  the  reality  is  taken  for 
granted.     It  must,  likewise,  be  poetical  ;_that  only,  I  mean,  must 
be  taken  which  la  the  permanent  in  our  nature,  which  is  com- 
mon,  and  therefore  deeply  interesting  to  all  ages.     The  events 
themselves  are  immaterial,  otherwise  than  as  the  clothing  and 
manifestation  of  the  spirit  that  is  working  within.     In  this  mode 
the  unity  resulting  from  succession  is  destroyed,  but  is  supplied  bv 
a  unity  of  a  higher  order,  which  connects  the  events  by  reference 
to  the  workers  g.ves  a  reason  for  them  in  the  motives,  and  pre- 
sents men  -in  then-  causative  character.     It  takes,  therefore,  that 
part  of  real  history  which  is  the  least  known,  and  infuses  a  prin- 
ciple of  hfe  and  organization  into  the  naked  facts,  and  makes 
ttiem  all  the  framework  of  an  animated  whole 
•    In  my  happier  days,  while  I  had  yet  hope  and  onward-looking 
thoughts  I  planned  an  historical  drama  of  King  Stephen,  in  the 
manner  of  Shakspeare.     Indeed  it  would  be  desirable  that  some 
man  of  dramatic  genius  should  dramatize  all  those  emitted  by 
Shakspeare,  as  far  down  as  Henry  VII.     Perkin  Warbeck  would 
make  a  most  interesting  drama.     A  few  scenes  of  Mai-low's  Ed- 
ward  II.  might  be  preserved.     After  Henry  VIII.,  the  events  are 
oo  well  and  distinctly  known,  to  be,  without  plump  iuverisimili- 
tude,  crowded  together  in  one  night's  exhibition.     Whereas  the 
history  of  our  ancient  kings,-the  events  of  their  reigns,  I  mean 
-are  like  stars  in  the  sky  ;_whatever  the  real  interspaces  may 
be,  and  however  great,  they  seem  close  to  each  other.     The  stars 
-the  events-strike  us  and  remain  in  onr  eye,  little  modified  by 
the  difference  of  dates.     An  historic  drama  is,  therefore,  a  collec- 
turn  of  events  borrowed  from  history,  but  connected  together  in 
respect  of  cause  and  time,  poetically  and  by  dramatic  fiction.     It 
would  be  a  fine  national  custom  to  act  such  a  series  of  dramatic 
histories  in  orderly  succession,  in  the  yearly  Christmas  holidays 
and  could  not  but  tend  to  counteract  that  mock  cosmopolitism 
which  under  a  positive  term  really  implies  nothing  but  a  nega- 
t  on  of,  or  indifference  to,  the  particular  love  of  our  country.    By 
its  nationality  must  every  nation  retain  its  independence  -I 
mean  a  nationality  quoad  the  nation.     Better  thus  j-nationality 
ft.  each  individual,  quoad  his  country,  is  equal  to  the  sense  of 


118  SHAKSPEARE^S  ENGLISH 

individuality  quoad  himself;  but  himself  as  subsensuous,  and 
central.  Patriotism  is  equal  to  the  sense  of  individuality  re- 
flected from  every  other  individual.  There  may  come  a  higher 
virtue  in  both-just  cosmopolitism.  But  this  latter  is  not  possi- 
ble but  by  antecedence  of  the  former.  _ 

Shakspeare  has  included  the  most  important  part  of  nine 
reigns  in  his  historical  dramas— namely— King  John,  Richard L1L 
—Henry  IV.  (two)— Henry  Y— Henry  YI.  (three)  including  Ed- 
ward Y.  and  Henry  YI1L,  in  all  ten  plays.     There  remain,  there- 
fore, to  be  done,  with  the  exception  of  a  single  scene  or  two  that 
should  be  adopted   from  Marlow,  eleven  reigns— of  which  the 
first  two  appear  the  only  unpromising  subjects  ;— and  those  two 
dramas  must  be  formed  wholly  or  mainly  of  invented  private  sto- 
ries which,  however,  could  not  have  happened  except  in  conse- 
quence of  the  events  and  measures  of  these  reigns,  and  which 
should  furnish  opportunity  both  of  exhibiting  the  manners  and 
oppressions  of  the  times,  and  of  narrating  dramatically  the  great 
events  ;— if  possible,  the  death  of  the  two  sovereigns,  at  least  ol 
the  latter,  should  be  made  to  have  some  influence  on  the  finale 
of  the  story.     All  the  rest  are  glorious  subjects  ;  especially  Henry 
I   (being  the  struggle  between  the  men  of  arms  and  of  letters, 
in  the  persons  of  Henry  and  Becket),  Stephen,  Richard  I.,  Ed- 
ward II. ,  and  Henry  VII. 


KING  JOHN". 
l.ct  i.  sc.  1. 

Bast.  James  Gurney,  wilt  thou  give  us  leave  awhile  ? 
Gur.  Good  leave,  good  Philip. 
Bast.  Philip  ?  sparrow  I  James,  &c 

Theobald  adopts  Warburton's  conjecture  of  '  spare  me.' 
0  true  Warburton  !  and  the  sancta  simjplicitas  of  honest  dull 
Theobald's  faith  in  him  !  Nothing  can  be  more  lively  or  charac- 
teristic  than  'Philip?  Sparrow!'  Had  Warburton  read  old 
Skelton's  'Philip  Sparrow,'  an  exquisite  and  original  poem,  and 
no  doubt,  popular  in  Shakspeare's  time,  even  Warburton  would 
scarcely  have  made  so  deep  a  plunge  into  the  bathetic  as  to  have 
deathified  '  sparrow'  into  '  spare  me !' 


HISTORICAL  PLATS.  U9 

Act  iii.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Faulconbridge  — 

Now,  by  my  life,  this  day  grows  wondrous  hot  • 
borne  airy  devil  hovers  in  the  sky,  Ac. 

Theobald  adopts  Warburton's  conjecture  of  '  fiery  ' 

I  prefer  the  old  text :  the  word  ■  devil'  implies  <  fiery.'  Tor, 
need  on  y  read  the  line,  laying  a  fell  and  strong  emphasis  or! 
ton'raIterafioneiVe  "SeleSSness  and  testelessness  of  Warbur- 

RICHARD  II. 

and  T^f^  ^"l*116  transitional  fo*  between  the  epic  poem 
and  the  drama  Js  the  historic  drama;  that  in  the  epic  poem  a 
re-announced  fate  gradually  adjusts  and  employs  the  wfil  and 
*e  events  as  lts  instruments,  whilst  the  drama  on  the  otto 
.and,  places  fate  and  will  in  opposition  to  each  other,  and  !S  then 

71LZ r  '•  Whe"  t  ViCt°ry  °f  &teis  °hM  -consequent 
>t  imperfecta  m  the  opposing  will,  so  as  to  leave  a  final  im- 
-pn  that  the  fate  itself  is  but  a  higher  and  a  more  inteigent 

From  the  length  of  the  speeches,  and  the  circumstance  that, 

th  one  exception,  the  events  are  all  historical,  and  presented 

.then-  results,  not  produced  by  acts  seen  by,  or  takfnf  Jce 

efore,  the  audrence,  this  tragedy  is  ill  suited  J'onr  prese»tCee 

tlT  it !';  T? and  for  the  closet' z  feel  n°  **»*« s 

lac  ng  ,t  as  the  first  and  most  admirable  of  all   Shakspeare's 
rely  h.stoncal  plays.     For  the  two  parts  of  Henry  IvXm a 
•ec.es  of  themselves,  which  may  be  named  the  mfxed  drama 
be  d.stmct.on  does  not  depend  on  the  mere  quantity  of  h Zl 
I  events  in  the  play  compared  with  the  fictions ;  for  there  is  as 

£ytXmulMtaCbIth  ?,  "  RiChard'  bUt  in  the  rel«* 
ms  the  dot  P in  th  ,  VUI?y  hiSt°riCal  P1^8'  tbe  J*taJ 

W  H»    if  n     *    im'Xed'  rt  dire0ts  ;t''   in  the  rest,  as  Mac- 

ttedTc  L  T MT'  ?"*'  *  SUbSCTVeS  *     But  however 

1 it shou Id  ft  1  d^d  "  uTa  may  be'  G°d  f°Aid  that  e-n 
ae  it  should  fall  dead  on  the  hearts  of  jacobinized  Englishmen ' 
|  mdeed,  we  might  say^^W  r^ndi!     fTL' 

I  wofk      It ei,remih1SCeaCf  "  the  aU-Pe™eating  soul  of  tin. 
work.     It  1S,  perhaps,  the  most  purely  historical  of  Shak- 


120  SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH 

.    a  ■      TV.PVP  are  not  in  it,  as  in  the  others,  characters 

tal  institutions  of  social  life,  .vhich  bind  men  together.  - 
This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  scepter'd  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise ; 
This  fortress,  built  by  nature  for  herself, 
A-ainst  infection,  and  the  hand  of  war  • 
This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world ; 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 
Which  serves  it  in  the  office  of  a  wall, 
Or  as  a  moat  defensive  to  a  home, 
Ao-mnst  the  envv  of  less  happier  lands ; 
&n£rt3*  this  earth^his  realm  this  England, 
This  nurse,  this  teeming  womb  of  royal  kings 
Fear'dby  their  breed,  and  famous  by  their  birth,  &c 

Add  the  famous  passage  in  King  John  :— 
This  England  never  did,  nor  ever  shall, 
Lie  at  the  proud  foot  of  a  conqueror 
But  when  it  first  did  help  to  wound  itself.  _ 
Now  these  her  princes  are  come  home  again, 
Come  the  three  corners  of  the  world  in  arms, 
And  we  shall  shock  them :  naught  shall  make  us  rue, 
If  En-land  to  itself  do  rest  but  true. 


HISTORICAL   PLATS  121 

cealment  of  art,  for  the  catastrophe.  Observe  how  he  here  pre- 
sents the  germ  of  all  the  after-events  in  Richard's  insincerity, 
partiality,  arbitrariness,  and  favoritism,  and  in  the  proud,  tempes- 
tuous temperament  of  his  barons.  In  the  very  beginning,  also., 
is  displayed  that  feature  in  Richard's  character,  which  is  never 
forgotten  throughout  the  play — his  attention  to  decorum,  and  high 
feeling  of  the  kingly  dignity.  These  anticipations  show  with 
what  judgment  Shakspeare  wrote,  and  illustrate  his  care  to  con- 
nect the  past  and  future,  and  unify  them  with  the  present  by 
forecast  and  reminiscence. 

It  is  interesting  to  a  critical  ear  to  compare  the  six  opening 
lines  of  the  play — 

Old  John  of  Gaunt,  time-honored  Lancaster, 
Hast  thou,  according  to  thy  oath  and  band,  &c. 

each  closing  at  the  tenth  syllable,  with  the  rhythraless  metre  of 
the  verse  in  Henry  VI.  and  Titus  Andronicus,  in  order  that  the 
difference,  indeed,  the  heterogeneity,  of  the  two  may  be  felt 
etiam  in  simillimis  prima  superficie.  Here  the  weight  of  the 
single  words  supplies  all  the  relief  afforded  by  intercurrent  verse, 
while  the  whole  represents  the  mood.  And  compare  the  appar- 
ently defective  metre  of  Bolingbroke's  first  line, — 

Many  years  of  happy  days  befall — 

with  Prospero's, 

Twelve  years  since,  Miranda!  twelve  years  since — 

The  actor  should  supply  the  time  by  emphasis,  and  pause  on  the 
first  syllable  of  each  of  these  verses. 
Act  i.  sc.  1.     Bolingbroke's  speech  : — 

First  (heaven  be  the  record  to  my  speech  1) 
In  the  devotion  of  a  subject's  love,  &c. 

I  remember  in  the  Sophoclean  drama  no  more  striking  ex- 
ample of  the  to  TtQinop  xai  aefivbv  than  this  speech  ;  and  the 
rhymes  in  the  last  six  lines  well  express  the  preconcertednsss  of 
Bolingbroke's  scheme  so  beautifully  contrasted  with  the  vehe- 
mence and  sincere  irritation  of  Mowbray. 

lb.     Bolingbroke's  speech  : — 

Which  blood,  like  sacriftcing  Abel's,  cries, 
vol.  iv.  F 


122  SHAKSPEARE7S   ENGLISH 

Even  from  the  tongueless  caverns  of  the  earth, 
To  me,  for  justice  and  rough  chastisement. 

Note  the   deivbv  of  this    '  to    me,'   which  is  evidently  felt   b* 
Richard : — 

How  high  a  pitch  his  resolution  soars  ! 

and  the  affected  depreciation  afterwards  ; — 

As  he  is  but  my  father's  brother's  son. 

lb.     Mowbray's  speech  : — 

In  haste  whereof,  most  heartily  I  pray 
Your  highness  to  assign  our  trial  day. 

The  occasional  interspersion  of  rhymes,  and  the  more  frequent 
winding  up  of  a  speech  therewith — what  purpose  was  this  de- 
signed to  answer  ?  In  the  earnest  drama,  I  mean.  Deliberate- 
ness  ?  An  attempt,  as  in  Mowbray,  to  collect  himself  and  be 
cool  at  the  close  ? — I  can  see  that  in  the  following  speeches  the 
rhyme  answers  the  end  of  the  Greek  chorus,  and  distinguishes  the 
general  truths  from  the  passions  of  the  dialogue ;  but  this  does  not 
exactly  justify  the  practice,  which  is  unfrequent  in  proportion  to 
the  excellence  of  Shakspeare's  plays.  One  thing,  however,  is  to 
be  observed, — that  the  speakers  are  historical,  known,  and,  so  far, 
formal  characters,  and  their  reality  is  already  a  fact.  This 
should  be  borne  in  mind.  The  whole  of  this  scene  of  the  quarrel 
between  Mowbray  and  Bolingbroke  seems  introduced  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  by  anticipation  the  characters  of  Richard  and 
Bolingbroke.  In  the  latter  there  is  observable  a  decorous  and 
courtly  checking  of  his  anger  in  subservience  to  a  predetermined 
plan — especially  in  his  calm  speech  after  receiving  sentence  of 
banishment — compared  with  Mowbray's  unaffected  lamentation. 
In  the  one,  all  is  ambitious  hope  of  something  yet  to  come ;  in 
the  other  it  is  desolation,  and  a  looking  backward  of  the  heart. 

lb.  sc.  2 

Gaunt.     Heaven's  is  the  quarrel;  for  heaven's  substitute, 
His  deputy  anointed  in  his  right, 
Hath  caus'd  his  death :  the  which,  if  wrongfully, 
Let  heaven  revenge ;  for  I  may  never  lift 
An  angry  arm  against  his  minister. 

Without  the  hollow  extravagance  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's 


HISTORICAL  PLAYS.  123 

ultra-royalism,  how  carefully  does  Shakspeare  acknowledge  and 
reverence  the  eternal  distinction  between  the  mere  individual, 
and  the  symbolic  or  representative,  on  which  all  genial  law,  no 
less  than  patriotism,  depends.  The  whole  of  this  second  scene 
commences,  and  is  anticipative  of,  the  tone  and  character  of  the 
play  at  large. 

lb.  sc.  3.  In  none  of  Shakspeare's  fictitious  dramas,  or  in  those 
founded  on  a  history  as  unknown  to  his  auditors  generally  as  fic- 
tion, is  this  violent  rupture  of  the  succession  of  time  found  : — a 
proof,  I  think,  that  the  pure  historic  drama,  like  Richard  II.  and 
King  John,  had  its  own  laws. 

lb.     Mowbray's  speech  : — 

A  dearer  merit 

Have  I  deserved  at  your  highness'  hand. 

0,  the  instinctive  propriety  of  Shakspeare  in  the  choice  of 
words  ! 

lb.     Richard's  speech  : — 

Nor  never  by  advised  purpose  meet, 
To  plot,  contrive,  or  complot  any  ill 
'Gainst  us,  our  state,  our  subjects,  or  our  land. 

Already  the  selfish  weakness  of  Richard's  character  opens. 
Nothing  will  such  minds  so  readily  embrace,  as  indirect  ways 
softened  down  to  their  gz^m'-consciences  by  policy,  expedience,  &c 

Tb.     Mowbray's  speech  : — 

All  the  world's  my  "way. 

'  The  world  was  all  before  him.' — Milt. 
lb. 

Boling.  How  long  a  time  lies  in  our  little  word  ! 

Four  lagging  winters,  and  four  wanton  springs, 
End  in  a  word :  such  is  the  breath  of  kings. 

Admirable  anticipation  ! 

lb.  sc.  4.  This  is  a  striking  conclusion  of  a  first  act, — letting 
the  reader  into  the  secret ; — having  before  impressed  us  with  the 
dignified  and  kingly  manners  of  Richard,  yet  by  well-managed 
anticipations  leading  us  on  to  the  full  gratification  of  pleasure  in 
our  own  penetration.  In  this  scene  a  new  light  is  thrown  on 
Richard's  character.  Until  now  he  has  appeared  in  all  the 
beauty  of  royalty  ;  but  here,   as  soon  as  h«  is  left  to  himself 


124  SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH 

the  inherent  weakness  of  his  character  is  immediately  shown, 
It  is  a  weakness,  however,  of  a  peculiar  kind,  not  arising  from 
want  of  personal  courage,  or  any  specific  defect  of  faculty,  but 
rather  an  intellectual  feminineness,  which  feels  a  necessity  of 
ever  leaning  on  the  breasts  of  others,  and  of  reclining  on  those 
who  are  all  the  while  known  to  be  inferiors.  To  this  must  be 
attributed  as  its  consequences  all  Richard's  vices,  his  tendency  to 
concealment,  and  his  cunning,  the  whole  operation  of  which  is 
directed  to  the  getting  rid  of  present  difficulties.  Richard  is  not 
meant  to  be  a  debauchee ;  but  we  see  in  him  that  sophistry 
which  is  common  to  man,  by  which  we  can  deceive  our  own 
hearts,  and  at  one  and  the  same  time  apologize  for,  and  yet  com- 
mit the  error.  Shakspeare  has  represented  this  character  in  a 
very  peculiar  manner.  He  has  not  made  him  amiable  with 
counterbalancing  faults ;  but  has  openly  and  broadly  drawn  those 
faults  without  reserve,  relying  on  Richard's  disproportionate  suf- 
ferings and  gradually  emergent  good  qualities  for  our  sympathy  ; 
and  this  was  possible,  because  his  faults  are  not  positive  vices, 
but  spring  entirely  from  defect  of  character. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

'  K.  Rich.     Can  sick  men  play  so  nicely  with,  their  names  ? 

Yes  !  on  a  death-bed  there  is  a  feeling  which  may  make  all 
things  appear  but  as  puns  and  equivocations.  And  a  passion 
there  is  that  carries  off  its  own  excess  by  plays  on  words  as  natu- 
rally, and,  therefore,  as  appropriately  to  drama,  as  by  gesticula- 
tions, looks,  or  tones.  This  belongs  to  human  nature  as  such, 
independently  of  associations  and  habits  from  any  particular  rank 
of  life  or  mode  of  employment ;  and  in  this  consists  Shakspeare's 
vulgarisms,  as  in  Macbeth's — 

The  devil  damn  thee  black,  thou  cream-fac'd  loon !  <fec. 

This  is  (to  equivocate  on  Dante's  words)  in  truth  the  nobile  vol- 
gare  eloquenza.  Indeed  it  is  profoundly  true  that  there  is  a 
natural,  an  almost  irresistible,  tendency  in  the  mind,  when  im- 
mersed in  one  strong  feeling,  to  connect  that  feeling  with  every 
sight  and  object  around  it ;  especially  if  there  be  opposition,  and 
the  words  addressed  to  it  are  in  any  way  repugnant  to  the  feel- 
ing itself,  as  here  in  the  instance  of  Richard's  unkind  language  : 

Misery  makes  sport  to  mock  itsel£ 


HISTORICAL   PLAYS.  125 

"No  doubt,  something  of  Shakspeare's  punning  must  be  attrib- 
uted to  his  age,  in  which  direct  and  formal  combats  of  wit  were 
a  favorite  pastime  of  the  courtly  and  accomplished.  It  was  an 
age  more  favorable,  upon  the  whole,  to  vigor  of  intellect  than 
the  present,  in  which  a  dread  of  being  thought  pedantic  dispirits 
and  flattens  the  energies  of  original  minds.  But  independently 
of  this,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  a  pun,  if  it  be  congru- 
ous with  the  feeling  of  the  scene,  is  not  only  allowable  in  the 
dramatic  dialogue,  but  oftentimes  one  of  the  most  effectual  inten- 
sives  of  passion. 

Tb. 

K.  Rich.  Right ;  you  say  true:  as  Hereford's  love,  so  his; 
As  theirs,  so  mine ;  and  all  be  as  it  is. 

The  depth  of  this  compared  with  the  first  scene  : — 

How  high  a  pitch,  &c. 

There  is  scarcely  any  thing  in  Shakspeare  in  its  degree,  more 
admirably  drawn  than  York's  character  ;  his  religious  loyalty 
struggling  with  a  deep  grief  and  indignation  at  the  king's  follies  ; 
his  adherence  to  his  word  and  faith,  once  given  in  spite  of  all, 
even  the  most  natural,  feelings.  You  see  in  him  the  weakness 
of  old  age,  and  the  overwhelmingness  of  circumstances,  for  a  time 
surmounting  his  sense  of  duty — the  junction  of  both  exhibited  in 
his  boldness  in  words  and  feebleness  in  immediate  act  ;  and  then 
again  his  effort  to  retrieve  himself  in  abstract  loyalty,  even  at  the 
heavy  price  of  the  loss  of  his  son.  This  species  of  accidental  and 
adventitious  weakness  is  brought  into  parallel  with  [Richard's 
continually  increasing  energy  of  thought,  and  as  constantly  di- 
minishing power  of  acting  ; — and  thus  it  is  Richard  thai  breathes 
a  harmony  and  a  relation  into  all  the  characters  of  the  r^ay. 

Qut  en.  To  please  the  king  I  did ;  to  please  myself 
I  can  not  do  it ;  yet  I  know  no  cause 
Why  I  should  welcome  such  a  guest  as  grief, 
Save  bidding  farewell  to  so  sweet  a  guest 
As  my  sweet  Richard :  yet  again,  methinks, 
Some  unborn  sorrow,  ripe  in  sorrow's  womb, 
Is  coming  toward  me ;  and  my  inward  soul 
With  nothing  trembles  :  at  something  it  grieves, 
More  than  with  parting  from  my  lord  the  king. 


:26  SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH 

It  is  clear  that  Shakspeare  never  meant  to  represent  Richard 
as  a  vulgar  debauchee,  but  a  man  with  a  wantonness  of  spirit  in 
external  show,  a  feminine  friendism,  an  intensity  of  woman-like 
love  of  those  immediately  about  him,  and  a  mistaking  of  the  de- 
light  of  being  loved  by  him  for  a  love  of  him.     And  mark  in  this 
scene  Shakspeare's  gentleness  in  touching  the  tender  supersti- 
tions, the  terra  incognita  of  presentiments,  in  the  human  mind; 
and  how  sharp  a  line  of  distinction  he  commonly  draws  between 
these  obscure  forecastings  of  general  experience  in  each  individ- 
ual  and  the  vulgar  errors  of  mere  tradition.     Indeed,  it  may  be 
taken  once  for  all  as  the  truth,  that  Shakspeare,  in  the  absolute 
universality  of  his  genius,  always  reverences  whatever  arises  out 
of  our  moral  nature  ;  he  never  profanes  his  muse  with  a  con- 
temptuous reasoning  away  of  the  genuine  and  general,  however 
unaccountable,  feelings  of  mankind. 

The  amiable  part  of  Richard's  character  is  brought  full  upon 
us  by  his  queen's  few  words — 

....  so  sweet  a  guest 
As  my  sweet  Richard ; — 

and  Shakspeare  has  carefully  shown  in  him  an  intense  love  of  his 
country,  well  knowing  how  that  feeling  would,  in  a  pure  historic 
drama,  redeem  him  in  the  hearts  of  the  audience.  Yet  even  in 
this  love  there  is  something  feminine  and  personal  :— 

Dear  earth,  I  do  salute  thee  with  my  hand,— 
As  a  long  parted  mother  with  her  child 
Plays  fondly  with  her  tears,  and  smiles  in  meeting ; 
So  weeping,  smiling,  greet  I  thee,  my  earth, 
And  do  thee  favor  with  my  royal  hands. 

With'  this  is  combined  a  constant  overflow  of  emotions  from  a 
total  incapability  of  controlling  them,  and  thence  a  waste  of  that 
energy  which  should  have  been  reserved  for  actions,  in  the  pas- 
sion and  effort  of  mere  resolves  and  menaces.  The  consequence 
r,  moral  exhaustion,  and  rapid  alternations  of  unmanly  despair 
and  ungrounded  hope— every  feeling  being  abandoned  for  its  di- 
rect opposite  upon  the  pressure  of  external  accident  And  yet 
when  Richard's  inward  weakness  appears  to  seek  refuge  in  his 
despair  and  his  exhaustion  counterfeits  repose,  the  old  habit  of 
kingliness,  the  effect  of  flatterers  from  his  infancy,  is  ever  and 
anon  producing  in  him  a  sort  of  wordy  courage  which  only  serves 


HISTORICAL  PLAYS.  127 

to  betray  more  clearly  his  internal  impotence.     The  second  and 
third  scenes  of  the  third  act  combine  and  illustrate  all  this  : — 

Aumerle.  He  means,  my  lord,  that  we  are  too  remiss  ; 
Whilst  Bolingbroke,  through  our  security, 
Grows  strong  and  great,  in  substance,  and  in  friends. 

K.  Rich.  Discomfortable  cousin  !  know'st  thou  not, 

That  when  the  searching  eye  of  heaven  is  hid 
Behind  the  globe,  and  lights  the  lower  world, 
Then  thieves  and  robbers  range  abroad  unseen, 
In  murders  and  in  outrage,  bloody  here ; 
But  when,  from  under  this  terrestrial  ball, 
He  fires  the  proud  tops  of  the  eastern  pines, 
And  darts  his  light  through  every  guilty  hole, 
Then  murders,  treasons,  and  detested  sins, 
The  cloke  of  night  being  pluckt  from  off  their  backs, 
Stand  bare  and  naked,  trembling  at  themselves? 
So  when  this  thief,  this  traitor,  Bolingbroke,  &e. 

Aumerle.  Where  is  the  Duke  my  father  with  his  power  ? 
R~.  Rich.  ~No  matter  where ;  of  comfort  no  man  speak : 

Let's  talk  of  graves,  of  worms,  and  epitaphs, 

Make  dust  our  paper,  and  with  rainy  eyes 

Write  sorrow  on  the  bosom  of  the  earth,  &c. 

***** 

Aumerle.  My  father  hath  a  power,  inquire  of  him ; 

And  learn  to  make  a  body  of  a  limb. 
X.  Rich.  Thou  chid'st  me  well :  proud  Bolingbroke,  1  come 

To  change  blows  with  thee  for  our  day  of  doom. 

This  ague-fit  of  fear  is  over-blown  ; 

An  easy  task  it  is  to  win  our  own. 

*  *  *        .         *  * 

Scroop.  Your  uncle  York  hath  join'd  with  Bolingbroke. — 

*  *  *  *  * 

K.  Rich.  Thou  hast  said  enough, 

Beshrew  thee,  cousin,  which  didst  lead  me  forth 

Of  that  sweet  way  I  was  in  to  despair  ! 

What  say  you  now  ?  what  comfort  have  we  now  i 

By  heaven,  I'll  hate  him  everlastingly, 

That  bids  me  be  of  comfort  any  more. 

***** 

Act  iii.  sc.  3.  Bolingbroke's  speech  : 

Noble  lord, 

Go  to  the  rude  ribs  of  that  ancient  castle,  &c. 

Observe  the  fine  struggle  of  a  haughty  sense  of  power  and  am 
bition  in  Bolingbroke  with  the  necessity  for  dissimulation. 


128  SHAKSPEARE'S   ENGLISH 

lb.  sc.  4.  See  here  the  skill  and  judgment  of  our  poet  in  giving 
reality  and  individual  life,  by  the  introduction  of  accidents  in  his 
historic  plays,  and  thereby  making  them  dramas,  and  not  histo- 
ries. How  beautiful  an  islet  of  repose — a  melancholy  repose, 
indeed — is  this  scene  with  the  Gardener  and  his  Servant.  And 
how  truly  affecting  and  realizing  is  the  incident  of  the  very  horse 
Barbary,  in  the  scene  with  the  Groom  in  the  last  act  ! — 

Groom.  I  was  a  poor  groom  of  thy  stable,  King, 

When  thou  wert  King ;  who,  travelling  towards  York, 
With  much  ado,  at  length  have  gotten  leave 
To  look  upon  my  sometime  master's  face. 
0,  how  it  yearn'd  my  heart,  when  I  beheld, 
In  London  streets,  that  coronation  day, 
When  Bolingbroke  rode  on  roan  Barbary  ! 
That  horse,  that  thou  so  often  hast  bestrid ; 
That  horse,  that  I  so  carefully  have  dress'd  ! 
K.  Rich.  Rode  he  on  Barbary  ? 

Bolingbroke's  character,  in  general,  is  an  instance  how  Shak- 
speare  makes  one  play  intro<?  rctory  to  another  ;  for  it  is  evidently 
a  preparation  for  Henry  IV.,  ns  Gloster  in  the  third  part  of  Henry 
VI.  is  for  Richard  III. 

I  would  once  more  rema  k  upon  the  exalted  idea  of  the  only 
true  loyalty  developed  in  his  noble  and  impressive  play.  We 
have  neither  the  rants  of  .Jeaumont  and  Fletcher,  nor  the  sneers 
of  Massinger  ; — the  vast  importance  of  the  personal  character  of 
the  sovereign  is  distinctly  enounced,  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  the 
genuine  sanctity  which  surrounds  him  is  attributed  to,  and  ground- 
ed on,  the  position  in  which  he  stands  as  the  convergence  and 
exponent  of  the  life  and  power  of  the  state. 

The  great  end  of  the  body  politic  appears  to  be  to  humanize, 
and  assist  in  the  progressiveness  of,  the  animal  man ; — but  the 
problem  is  so  complicated  with  contingencies  as  to  render  it  nearly 
impossible  to  lay  down  rules  for  the  formation  of  a  state.  And 
should  we  be  able  to  form  a  system  of  government,  which  should 
so  balance  its  different  powers  as  to  form  a  check  upon  each,  and 
so  continually  remedy  and  correct  itself,  it  would,  nevertheless, 
defeat  its  own  aim  ; — for  man  is  destined  to  be  guided  by  higher 
principles,  by  universal  views,  which  can  never  be  fulfilled  in  this 
state  of  existence, — by  a  spirit  of  progressiveness  which  can  never 
be  accomplished,  for  then  it  would  cease  to  be.     Plato's  Republic 


HISTORICAL   PLAYS.  12g 

is  like  Bunyan's  Town  of  Man-Soul,— a  description  of  an  indi- 
vidual, all  of  whose  faculties  are  in  their  proper  subordination 
and  inter-dependence ;  and  this  it  is  assumed  may  be  the  proto- 
type of  the  state  as  one  great  individual.  But  there  is  this  soph- 
ism in  it,  that  it  is  forgotten  that  the  human  faculties,  indeed, 
are  parts  and  not  separate  things  ;  but  that  yon  could  never  get 
chiefs  who  were  wholly  reason,  ministers  who  were  wholly  un- 
derstanding, soldiers  all  wrath,  laborers  all  concupiscence,  and  so 
on  through  the  rest.  Each  of  these  partakes  of,  and  interferes 
with,  all  the  others. 


HENRY  IV.    PART  I. 
Act  i.  sc.  1.     King  Henry's  speech  : — 

No  more  the  thirsty  entrance  of  this  soil 

Shall  daub  her  lips  with  her  own  children's  blood. 

A  most  obscure  passage  :  but  I  think  Theobald's  interpretation 
right,  namely,  that  '  thirsty  entrance'  means  the  dry  penetrabili- 
ty, or  bibulous  drought,  of  the  soil.  The  obscurity  of  this  passage 
is  of  the  Shaksperian  sort. 

lb.  sc.  2.  In  this,  the  first  introduction  of  Falstafi\  observe  the 
consciousness  and  the  intentionality  of  his  wit,  so  that  when  it 
does  not  flow  of  its  own  accord,  its  absence  is  felt,  and  an  effort 
visibly  made  to  recall  it.  Note  also  throughout  how  Falstaff's 
pride  is  gratified  in  the  power  of  influencing  a  prince  of  the  blood, 
the  heir-apparent,  by  means  of  it.  Hence  his  dislike  to  Prince 
John  of  Lancaster,  and  his  mortification  when  he  finds  his  wit 
fail  on  him : — 

P  John.     Fare  you  well,  Falstaff:  I,  in  my  condition, 
Shall  better  speak  of  you  than  you  deserve. 
Fal.  I  would  you  had  but  the  wit;  'twere  better  than  your  dukedom.— 
Good  faith,  this  same  young  sober-blooded  boy  doth  rot  love  me;— nor  a 
man  can  not  make  him  laugh. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Second  Carrier's  speech  : — 

.....  breeds  fleas  like  a  loach. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  misprint,  or  a  provincial  pronunciation,  for 
leach,'  that  is,  blood-suckers.     Had  it  been  gnats,  instead  of 

F* 


130  SHAKSPEARE'S   ENGLISH 

fleas,  there  might  have  been  some  sense,  though  small  probability, 
in  Warburton's  suggestion  of  the  Scottish  '  loch.'  Possibly  '  loach,' 
or  '  lutch,'  may  be  some  lost  word  for  dovecote,  or  poultry-lodge, 
notorious  for  breeding  fleas.  In  Stevens's  or  my  reading,  it 
should  properly  be  'loaches,'  or  'leeches,'  in  the  plural ;  except 
that  I  think  I  have  heard  anglers  speak  of  trouts  like  a  salmon. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

Glend.  Nay,  if  you  melt,  then  will  she  run  mad. 

This  '  nay'  so  to  be  dwelt  on  in  speaking,  as  to  be  equivalent 
to  a  dissyllable-u,  is  characteristic  of  the  solemn  Glendower  ;  but 
the  imperfect  line 

She  bids  you 

Upon  the  wanton  rushes  lay  you  down,  <fec. 

is  one  of  those  fine  hair-strokes  of  exquisite  judgment  peculiar  to 
Shakspeare  ; — thus  detaching  the  Lady's  speech,  and  giving  it 
the  individuality  and  entireness  of  a  little  poem,  while  he  draws 
attention  to  it. 


HENRY  IV.    PART  II. 


Act  ii.  sc.  2. 


P.  Hen.  Sup  any  women  with  him  ? 

Page.  None,  my  lord,  but  old  mistress  Quickly,  and  mistress  Doll  Tear 

Bheet. 

******** 

P.  Hen.  This  Doll  Tear-sheet  should  be  some  road. 

I  am  sometimes  disposed  to  think  that  this  respectable  young 
lady's  name  is  a  very  old  corruption  for  Tear-street — street- walker, 
terere  stratam  (viam).  Does  not  the  Prince's  question  rather 
show  this  ? — 

•  This  Doll  Tear-street  should  be  some  road  ?' 

Act  iii.  sc.  1.     King  Henry's  speech  :  — 

Then,  happy  low,  lie  down  ; 

Uneasy  lies  the  head  that  wears  a  crown. 

I  know  no  argument  by  which  to  persuade  any  one  to  be  of 
my  opinion,  or  rather  of  my  feeling  ;  but  yet  I  can  not  help  feel- 
ing that  '  Happy  low-lie- iown  !'  is  either  a  proverbial  expression, 


HISTOKICAL   PLAYS.  131 

or  the  burthen  of  some  old  song,  and  means,  '  Happy  the  man, 
who  lays  himself  down  on  his  straw  bed  or  chaff  pallet  on  the 
ground  or  floor !' 

Tb.  sc.  2.     Shallow's  speech  : — 

Rah,  tah,  tah,  would  'a  say ;  bounce,  would  'a  say,  <fec. 

That  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  have  more  than  once  been  guilty 
of  sneering  at  their  great  master,  can  not,  I  fear,  be  denied  ;  but 
the  passage  quoted  by  Theobald  from  the  Knight  of  the  Burning 
Pestle  is  an  imitation.  If  it  be  chargeable  with  any  fault,  it  is 
with  plagiarism,  not  with  sarcasm. 


HENRY  V. 

Act  1.  sc.  2.     Westmoreland's  speech  : — 

They  know  your  grace  hath  cause,  and  means,  and  might ; 
So  hath  your  highness  ;  never  King  of  England 
Had  nobles  richer,  (fee. 

Does  '  grace'  mean  the  king's  own  peculiar  domains  and  legal 
revenue,  and  c  highness'  his  feudal  rights  in  the  military  service 
of  his  nobles  ? — I  have  sometimes  thought  it  possible  that  the 
words  '  grace'  and  '  cause'  may  have  been  transposed  in  the 
copying  or  printing  ; — 

They  know  your  cause  hath  grace,  <fec. 

What  Theobald  meant,  I  can  not  guess.  To  me  his  pointing 
makes  the  passage  still  more  obscure.  Perhaps  the  lines  ought 
to  he  recited  dramatically  thus  : — ■ 

They  know  your  Grace  hath  cause,  and  means,  and  might : — 
So  hath  your  Highness — never  King  of  England 
Had  nobles  richer,  <fec. 

He  breaks  off  from  the  grammar  and  natural  order  from  ear- 
nestness, and  in  order  to  give  the  meaning  more  passionately. 
lb.     Exeter's  speech  : — 

Yet  that  is  but  a  crush! d  necessity. 

Perhaps  it  may  he  '  crash'  for  '  crass'  from  crassus,  clumsy ;  oi 
it  may  he  '  curt,'  defective,  imperfect ;  any  thing  would  be  hettei 


132  SHAKSPEARE'S  ENGLISH 

than  Warburton's  '  'scus'd,'  which  honest  Theobald,  of  course, 
adopts.  By  the  by,  it  seems  clear  to  me  that  this  speech  of 
Exeter's  properly  belong  to  Canterbury,  and  was  altered  by  the 
actors  for  convenience. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     K.  Henry's  speech: — 

We  would  not  die  in  that  man's  company 
That  fears  his  fellowship  to  die  with  us. 

Should  it  not  be  '  live'  in  the  first  line  ? 
lb.  sc.  5. 

Const.  0  diable  ! 

Orl.  0  seigneur  !  lejour  est  perdu,  tout  est  perdu  1 

Dan.  Mort  de  ma  vie  !  all  is  confounded,  all ! 

Reproach  and  everlasting  shame 

Sit  mocking  in  our  plumes  ! — 0  mcschanie  fortune  1 

Do  not  run  away  ! 

Ludicrous  as  these  introductory  scraps  of  French  appear,  so  in- 
stantly followed  by  good,  nervous  mother-English,  yet  they  are 
judicious,  and  produce  the  impression  which  Shakspeare  intend- 
ed,— a  sudden  feeling  struck  at  once  on  the  ears,  as  well  as  the 
eyes,  of  the  audience,  that  '  here  come  the  French,  the  baffled 
French  braggards  !' — And  this  will  appear  still  more  judicious, 
when  we  reflect  on  the  scanty  apparatus  of  distinguishing  dresses 
in  Shakspeare's  tiring-room. 


HENRY  VI.    PART  L 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Bedford's  speech  : — 

Hung  be  the  heavens  with  black,  yield  day  to  night; 
Comets,  importing  change  of  times  and  states, 
Brandish  your  crystal  tresses  in  the  sky  ; 
And  with  them  scourge  the  bad  revolting  stars 
That  have  consented  unto  Henry's  death  S 
Henry  the  fifth,  too  famous  to  live  long  ! 
England  ne'er  lost  a  king  of  so  much  worth. 

Head  aloud  any  two  or  three  passages  in  blank  verse  even 
from  Shakspeare's  earliest  dramas,  as  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  or 
Romeo  and  Juliet ;  and  then  read  in  the  same  way  this  speech, 
with  especial  attention  to  the  metre  ;   and  if  you  do  not  feel  the 


HISTORICAL  PLAYS.  138 

impossibility  of  the  latter  having  been  written  by  Shakspeare,  all 
I  dare  suggest  is,  that  you  may  have  ears, — for  so  has  another 
animal, — but  an  ear  you  can  not  have,  Trie  judice. 


RICHARD  III. 

This  play  should  be  contrasted  with  Richard  II.  Pride  of  in 
tellect  is  the  characteristic  of  Richard,  carried  to  the  extent  of 
even  boasting  to  his  own  mind  of  his  villany,  whilst  others  are 
present  to  feed  his  pride  of  superiority  ;  as  in  his  first  speech,  act 
ii.  sc.  1.  Shakspeare  here,  as  in  all  his  great  parts,  develops  in 
a  tone  of  sublime  morality  the  dreadful  consequences  of  placing 
the  moral,  in  subordination  to  the  mere  intellectual,  being.  In 
Richard  there  is  a  predominance  of  irony,  accompanied  with  ap- 
parently blunt  manners  to  those  immediately  about  him,  but 
formalized  into  a  more  set  hypocrisy  towards  the  people  as  rep- 
resented by  their  magistrates. 


LEAR. 

Of  all  Shakspeare's  plays  Macbeth  is  the  most  rapid,  Hamlet 
the  slowest,  in  movement,  Lear  combines  length  with  rapidity, — 
like  the  hurricane  and  the  whirlpool,  absorbing  while  it  advances. 
It  begins  as  a  stormy  day  in  summer,  with  brightness  ;  but  that 
brightness  is  lurid,  and  anticipates  the  tempest,   (t) 

It  was  not  without  forethought,  nor  is  it  without  its  due  signifi- 
cance, that  the  division  of  Lear's  kingdom  is  in  the  first  six  lines 
of  the  play  stated  as  a  thing  already  determined  in  all  its  partic- 
ulars, previously  to  the  trial  of  professions,  as  the  relative  re- 
wards of  which  the  daughters  were  to  be  made  to  consider  their 
several  portions.  The  strange,  yet  by  no  means  unnatural,  mix- 
ture of  selfishness,  sensibility,  and  habit  of  feeling  derived  from, 
and  fostered  by,  the  particular  rank  and  usages  of  the  individ- 
ual ; — the  intense  desire  of  being  intensely  beloved, — selfish,  and 
yet  characteristic  of  the  selfishness  of  a  loving  and  kindly  nature 
alone  ; — the  self-supportless  leaning  for  all  pleasure  on  another's 
breast ; — the  craving  after  sympathy  with  a  prodigal  disinterest- 
edness, frustrated  bv  its  own  ostentation,  and  the  mode  an  /  na 


134  NOTES  ON  LEAR. 

ture  of  its  claims  ; — the  anxiety,  the  distrust,  the  jealousy,  which 
more  or  less  accompany  all  selfish  affections,  and  are  amongst 
the  surest  contradistinctions  of  mere  fondness  from  true  love,  and 
which  originate  Lear's  eager  wish  to  enjoy  his  daughter's  violent 
professions,  whilst  the  inveterate  habits  of  sovereignty  convert 
the  wish  into  claim  and  positive  right,  and  an  incompliance  with 
it  into  crime  and  treason  ; — these  facts,  these  passions,  these 
moral  verities,  on  which  the  whole  tragedy  is  founded,  are  all 
prepared  for,  and  will  to  the  retrospect  be  found  implied,  in  these 
first  four  or  five  lines  of  the  play.  They  let  us  know  that  the 
trial  is  but  a  trick  ;  and  that  the  grossness  of  the  old  king's  rage 
is  in  part  the  natural  result  of  a  silly  trick  suddenly  and  most 
unexpectedly  baffled  and  disappointed. 

It  may  here  be  worthy  of  notice,  that  Lear  is  the  only  serious 
performance  of  Shakspeare,  the  interest  and  situations  of  which 
are  derived  from  the  assumption  of  a  gross  improbability  ;  whereas 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  tragedies  are,  almost  all  of  them,  found- 
ed on  some  out  of  the  way  accident  or  exception  to  the  general 
experience  of  mankind.  But  observe  the  matchless  judgment 
of  our  Shakspeare.  First,  improbable  as  the  conduct  of  Lear  is 
in  the  first  scene,  yet  it  was  an  old  story  rooted  in  the  popular 
faith, — a  thing  taken  for  granted  already,  and  consequently  with- 
out any  of  the  effects  of  improbability.  Secondly,  it  is  merely 
the  canvass  for  the  characters  and  passions, — a  mere  occasion 
for, — and  not,  in  the  manner  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  perpet- 
ually recurring  as  the  cause,  and  sine  qua  non  of, — the  incidents 
and  emotions.  Let  the  first  scene  of  this  play  have  been  lost, 
and  let  it  only  be  understood  that  a  fond  father  had  been  duped 
by  hypocritical  professions  of  love  and  duty  on  the  part  of  two 
daughters  to  disinherit  the  third,  previously,  and  deservedly, 
more  dear  to  him  ; — and  all  the  rest  of  the  tragedy  would  retain 
its  interest  undiminished,  and  be  perfectly  intelligible.  The  ac- 
cidental is  nowhere  the  groundwork  of  the  passions,  but  that 
which  is  catholic,  which  in  all  ages  has  been  and  ever  will  be, 
close  and  native  to  the  heart  of  man, — parental  anguish  from 
filial  ingratitude,  the  genuineness  of  worth,  though  coffined  in 
bluntness,  and  the  execrable  vileness  of  a  smooth  iniquity.  Per- 
naps  I  ought  to  have  added  the  Merchant  of  Venice  ;  but  here 
too  the  same  remarks  apply.  It  was  an  old  tale  ;  and  substitute 
any  other  danger  than  that  of  the  pound  of  flesh  (the  circum- 


NOTES   ON   LEAR.  135 

stance  in  which  the  improbability  lies),  yet  all  the  situations  and 
the  emotions  appertaining  to  them  remain  equally  excellent  and 
appropriate.  Whereas  take  away  from  the  Mad  Lover  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  the  fantastic  hypothesis  of  his  engagement  to 
cut  out  his  own  heart,  and  have  it  presented  to  his  mistress,  and 
all  the  main  scenes  must  go  with  it. 

Kotzebue  is  the  German  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  without  their 
poetic  powers,  and  without  their  vis  comica.  But,  like  them,  he 
always  deduces  his  situations  and  passions  from  marvellous  acci- 
dents, and  the  trick  of  bringing  one  part  of  our  moral  nature  to 
counteract  another  ;  as  our  pity  for  misfortune  and  admiration 
of  generosity  and  courage  to  combat  our  condemnation  of  guilt, 
as  in  adultery,  robbery,  and  other  heinous  crimes  ; — and,  like 
them  too,  he  excels  in  his  mode  of  telling  a  story  clearly  and  in- 
terestingly, in  a  series  of  dramatic  dialogues.  Only  the  trick  of 
making  tragedy-heroes  and  heroines  out  of  shopkeepers  and  bar- 
maids was  too  low  for  the  age,  and  too  unpoetic  for  the  genius, 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  inferior  in  every  respect  as  they  are 
to  their  great  predecessor  and  contemporary.  How  inferior  would 
they  have  appeared,  had  not  Shakspeare  existed  for  them  to  imi- 
tate ; — which  in  every  play,  more  or  less,  they  do,  and  in  their 
tragedies  most  glaringly  : — and  yet — (0  shame  !  shame  !) — they 
miss  no  opportunity  of  sneering  at  the  divine  man,  and  subide- 
tr acting  from  his  merits  !  (u) 

To  return  to  Lear.  Having  thus  in  the  fewest  words,  and  in 
a  natural  reply  to  as  natural  a  question, — which  yet  answers  the 
secondary  purpose  of  attracting  our  attention  to  the  difference  or 
diversity  between  the  characters  of  Cornwall  and  Albany, — pro- 
vided the  premisses  and  data,  as  it  were,  for  our  after-insight 
into  the  mind  and  mood  of  the  person,  whose  character,  passions, 
and  sufferings  are  the  main  subject-matter  of  the  play  ; — from 
Lear,  the  persona  patiens  of  his  drama,  Shakspeare  passes  with- 
out delay  to  the  second  in  importance,  the  chief  agent  and  prime 
mover,  and  introduces  Edmund  to  our  acquaintance,  preparing 
us  with  the  same  felicity  of  judgment,  and  in  the  same  easy  and 
natural  way,  for  his  character  in  the  seemingly  casual  communi- 
cation of  its  origin  and  occasion.  From  the  first  drawing  up  of 
the  curtain  Edmund  has  stood  before  us  in  the  united  strength 
and  beauty  of  earliest  manhood.  Our  eyes  have  been  questioning 
him.     Gifted  as  he  is  with  high  advantages  of  person,  and  fur- 


136  NOTES    ON  LEAR. 

thcr  endowed  by  nature  with  a  powerful  intellect  and  a  strong 
energetic  will,  even  without  any  concurrence  of  circumstances 
and  accident,  pride  will  necessarily  be  the  sin  that  most  easily 
besets  him.  But  Edmund  is  also  the  known  and  acknowledged 
son  of  the  princely  Gloster  :  he,  therefore,  has  both  the  germ  of 
pride,  and  the  conditions  best  fitted  to  evolve  and  ripen  it  into  a 
predominant  feeling.  Yet  hitherto  no  reason  appears  why  it 
should  be  other  than  the  not  unusual  pride  of  person,  talent,  and 
birth, — a  pride  auxiliary,  if  not  akin,  to  many  virtues,  and  the 
natural  ally  of  honorable  impulses.  But  alas  !  in  his  own  pres- 
ence his  own  father  takes  shame  to  himself  for  the  frank  avowal 
that  he  is  his  father, — he  has  "  blushed  so  often  to  acknowledge 
him  that  he  is  now  brazed  to  it  !"  Edmund  hears  the  circum- 
stances of  his  birth  spoken  of  with  a  most  degrading  and  licen- 
tious levity, — his  mother  described  as  a  wanton  by  her  own  para- 
mour, and  the  remembrance  of  the  animal  sting,  the  low  criminal 
gratifications  connected  with  her  wantonness  and  prostituted 
beauty,  assigned  as  the  reason,  why  "  the  whoreson  must  be  ac- 
knowledged !"  This,  and  the  consciousness  of  its  notoriety  ;  the 
gnawing  conviction  that  every  show  of  respect  is  an  effort  of 
courtesy,  which  recalls,  while  it  represses,  a  contrary  feeling  ; — 
this  is  the  ever  trickling  flow  of  wrormwood  and  gall  into  the 
wounds  of  pride, — the  corrosive  virus  which  inoculates  pride  with 
a  venom  not  its  own,  with  envy,  hatred,  and  a  lust  for  that  power 
which  in  its  blaze  of  radiance  would  hide  the  dark  spots  on  his 
disc, — with  pangs  of  shame  personally  undeserved,  and  therefore 
felt  as  wrongs,  and  with  a  blind  ferment  of  vindictive  working 
towards  the  occasions  and  causes,  especially  towards  a  brother, 
whose  stainless  birth  and  lawful  honors  were  the  constant  remem- 
brancers of  his  own  debasement,  and  were  ever  in  the  way  to 
prevent  all  chance  of  its  being  unknown,  or  overlooked  and  for- 
gotten. Add  to  this,  that  with  excellent  judgment,  and  provi- 
dent for  the  claims  of  the  moral  sense, — for  that  which,  relatively 
to  the  drama,  is  called  poetic  justice,  and  as  the  fittest  means  for 
reconciling  the  feelings  of  the  spectators  to  the  horrors  of  Gloster's 
after-sufferings, — at  least,  of  rendering  them  somewhat  less  un- 
endurable— (for  I  will  not  disguise  my  conviction,  that  in  this 
one  point  the  tragic  in  this  play  has  been  urged  beyond  the  out- 
ermost mark  and  ne  plus  ultra  of  the  dramatic) — Shakspeare  has 
precluded  all  excuse  and  palliation  of  the  guilt  incurred  by  both. 


NOTES   ON   LEAH.  137 

the  parents  of  the  base-born  Edmund,  by  Gloster's  confession  that 
he  was  at  the  time  a  married  man,  and  already  blest  with  a  law- 
ful heir  of  his  fortunes.  The  mournful  alienation  of  brotherly  love, 
occasioned  by  the  law  of  primogeniture  in  noble  families,  or 
rather  by  the  unnecessary  distinctions  engrafted  thereon,  and  this 
in  children  of  the  same  stock,  is  still  almost  proverbial  on  the 
continent, — especially,  as  I  know  from  my  own  observation,  in 
the  south  of  Europe, — and  appears  to  have  been  scarcely  less 
common  in  our  own  island  before  the  Revolution  of  1688,  if  we 
may  judge  from  the  characters  and  sentiments  so  frequent  in  our 
elder  comedies.  There  is  the  younger  brother,  for  instance,  in 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  play  of  the  Scornful  Lady,  on  the  one 
side,  and  Oliver  in  Shakspeare's  As  You  Like  It,  on  the  other. 
Need  it  be  said  how  heavy  an  aggravation,  in  such  a  case,  the 
stain  of  bastardy  must  have  been,  were  it  only  that  the  younger 
brother  was  liable  to  hear  his  own  dishonor  and  his  mother's 
infamy  related  by  his  father  with  an  excusing  shrug  of  the 
shoulders,  and  in  a  tone  betwixt  waggery  and  shame  ! 

By  the  circumstances  here  enumerated  as  so  many  predisposing 
causes,  Edmund's  character  might  well  be  deemed  already  suffi- 
ciently explained  ;  and  our  minds  prepared  for  it.  But  in  this 
tragedy  the  story  or  fable  constrained  Shakspeare  to  introduce 
wickedness  in  an  outrageous  form  in  the  persons  of  Regan  and 
Goneril.  He  had  read  nature  too  needfully  not  to  know,  that 
courage,  intellect,  and  strength  of  character  are  the  most  im- 
pressive forms  of  power,  and  that  to  power  in  itself,  without  ref- 
erence to  any  moral  end,  an  inevitable  admiration  and  compla- 
cency appertains,  whether  it  be  displayed  in  the  conquests  of  a 
Bonaparte  or  Tamerlane,  or  in  the  form  and  the  thunder  of  a 
cataract.  But  in  the  exhibition  of  such  a  character  it  was  of  the 
highest  importance  to  prevent  the  guilt  from  passing  into  utter 
monstrosity, — which  again  depends  on  the  presence  or  absence 
of  causes  and  temptations  sufficient  to  account  for  the  wicked- 
ness, without  the  necessity  of  recurring  to  a  thorough  fiendishness 
of  nature  for  its  origination.  For  such  are  the  appointed  rela- 
tions of  intellectual  power  to  truth,  and  of  truth  to  goodness, 
that  it  becomes  both  morally  and  poetically  unsafe  to  presenl 
what  is  admirable, — what  our  nature  compels  us  to  admire — in 
the  mind,  and  what  is  most  detestable  in  the  heart,  as  co-exist- 
ing in  the  same  individual  without  any  apparent  connection,  01 


188  NOTES   ON   LEAR 

any  modification  of  the  one  by  the  other.  That  Shakspeare  has 
in  one  instance,  that  of  Iago,  approached  to  this,  and  that  he  has 
done  it  successfully,  is,  perhaps,  the  most  astonishing  proof  of  his 
genius,  and  the  opulence  of  its  resources.  But  in  the  present 
tragedy,  in  which  he  was  compelled  to  present  a  Goneril  and  a 
Regan,  it  was  most  carefully  to  be  avoided  ; — and  therefore  the 
only  one  conceivable  addition  to  the  inauspicious  influences  on 
the  preformation  of  Edmund's  character  is  given,  in  the  informa- 
tion that  all  the  kindly  counteractions  to  the  mischievous  feelings 
of  shame,  which  might  have  been  derived  from  co-domestication 
with  Edgar  and  their  common  father,  had  been  cut  off  by  his 
absence  from  home,  and  foreign  education  from  boyhood  to  the 
present  time,  and  a  prospect  of  its  continuance,  as  if  to  preclude 
all  risk  of  his  interference  with  the  father's  views  for  the  elder 
and  legitimate  son  : — 

He  hath  been  out  nine  years,  and  away  he  shall  again. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Cor.    Nothing,  my  lord. 

Lear.  Nothing  ? 

Cor.     Nothing. 

Lear.  Nothing  can  come  of  nothing :  speak  again. 

Cor.     Unhappy  that  I  am,  I  can  not  heave 

My  heart  into  my  mouth  ■  I  love  your  majesty 
According  to  my  bond  ;  nor  more,  nor  less. 

There  is  something  of  disgust  at  the  ruthless  hypocrisy  of  her 
sisters,  and  some  little  faulty  admixture  of  pride  and  sullenness 
in  Cordelia's  '  Nothing  ;'  and  her  tone  is  well  contrived,  indeed, 
to  lessen  the  glaring  absurdity  of  Lear's  conduct,  but  answers 
the  yet  more  important  purpose  of  forcing  away  the  attention 
from  the  nursery-tale,  the  moment  it  has  served  its  end,  that  of 
supplying  the  canvass  for  the  picture.  This  is  also  materially 
furthered  by  Kent's  opposition,  which  displays  Lear's  moral  inca- 
pability of  resigning  the  sovereign  power  in  the  very  act  of  dis- 
posing of  it.  Kent  is,  perhaps,  the  nearest  to  perfect  goodness 
in  all  Shakspeare's  characters,  and  yet  the  most  individualized. 
There  is  an  extraordinary  charm  in  his  bluntness,  which  is  that 
only  of  a  nobleman  arising  from  a  contempt  of  overstrained  cour- 
tesy, and  combined  with  easy  placability  where  goodness  of  heart 
is  apparent.     His  passionate  affection  for,  and  fidelity  to  L<}^r, 


; 


NOTES  ON   LEAR.  139 

\ct  on  our  feelings  in  Lear's  own  favor  :  virtue  itself  seems  to  be 
in  company  with  him. 

lb.  sc.  2.     Edmund's  Speech  : — 

Who,  in  the  lusty  stealth  of  nature,  take 
More  composition  and  fierce  quality 
Than  doth,  <fec. 

Warburton's  note  upon  a  quotation  from  Vanini. 

Poor  Yanini  ! — Any  one  but  "Warburton  would  have  thought 
this  precious  passage  more  characteristic  of  Mr.  Shandy  than  of 
atheism.  If  the  fact  really  were  so  (which  it  is  not,  but  almost 
the  contrary),  I  do  not  see  why  the  most  confirmed  theist  might 
not  very  naturally  utter  the  same  wish.  But  it  is  proverbial  that 
the  youngest  son  in  a  large  family  is  commonly  the  man  of  the 
greatest  talents  in  it ;  and  as  good  an  authority  as  Vanini  has 
said — incalescere  in  venerem  ardentius,  spei  sobolis  injuriosum 
esse. 

In  this  speech  of  Edmund  you  see,  as  soon  as  a  man  can  not 
reconcile  himself  to  reason,  how  his  conscience  flies  off  by  way 
of  appeal  to  nature,  who  is  sure  upon  such  occasions  never  to 
find  fault,  and  also  how  shame  sharpens  a  predisposition  in  the 
heart  to  evil.  For  it  is  a  profound  moral,  that  shame  will  natu- 
rally generate  guilt ;  the  oppressed  will  be  vindictive,  like  Shy- 
lock,  and  in  the  anguish  of  undeserved  ignominy  the  delusion 
secretly  springs  up,  of  getting  over  the  moral  quality  of  an  ac- 
tion by  fixing  the  mind  on  the  mere  physical  act  alone. 

lb.     Edmund's  speech  : — 

This  is  the  excellent  foppery  of  the  world !  that,  when  we  are  sick  in  for- 
tune (often  the  surfeit  of  our  own  behavior),  we  make  guilty  of  our  disas- 
ters, the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,  (fee. 

Thus  scorn  and  misanthropy  are  often  the  anticipations  and 
mouth-pieces  of  wisdom  in  the  detection  of  superstitions.  Both 
individuals  and  nations  may  be  free  from  such  prejudices  by  be- 
ing below  them,  as  well  as  by  rising  above  them. 

lb.  sc.  3.  The  Steward  should  be  placed  in  exact  antithesis  to 
Kent,  as  the  only  character  of  utter  irredeemable  baseness  in 
Shakspeare.  Even  in  this  the  judgment  and  invention  of  the 
poet  are  very  observable  ; — for  what  else  could  the  willing  tool 
of  a  Goneril  be  ?  Not  a  vice  but  this  of  baseness  was  left  ope^a 
to  him. 


140  NOTES  ON   LEAR. 

lb.  sc.  4.  In  Lear  old  age  is  itself  a  character, — its  natural 
imperfections  being  increased  by  life-long  habits  of  receiving  a 
prompt  obedience.  Any  addition  of  individuality  would  have 
been  unnecessary  and  painful ;  for  the  relations  of  others  to  him, 
of  wondrous  fidelity  and  of  frightful  ingratitude,  alone  sufficiently 
distinguish  him.  Thus  Lear  becomes  the  open  and  ample  play- 
room of  nature's  passions. 

lb 

Knight.  Since  my  young  lady's  going  into  France,  Sir ;  the  fool  hath 
much  pin'd  away. 

The  Fool  is  no  comic  buffoon  to  make  the  groundlings  laugh, — 
no  forced  condescension  of  Shakspeare's  genius  to  the  taste  of  his 
audience.  Accordingly  the  poet  prepares  for  his  introduction, 
which  he  never  does  with  any  of  his  common  clowns  and  fools, 
by  bringing  him  into  living  connection  with  the  pathos  of  the 
play.  He  is  as  wonderful  a  creation  as  Caliban  ; — his  wild  bab- 
blings, and  inspired  idiocy,  articulate  and  gauge  the  horrors  of  the 
scene. 

The  monster  Goneril  prepares  what  is  necessary,  while  the 
character  of  Albany  renders  a  still  more  maddening  grievance 
possible,  namely,  Regan  and  Cornwall  in  perfect  sympathy  of 
monstrosity.  Not  a  sentiment,  not  an  image,  which  can  give 
pleasure  on  its  own  account,  is  admitted  ;  whenever  these  crea- 
tures are  introduced,  and  they  are  brought  forward  as  little  as 
possible,  pure  horror  reigns  throughout.  In  this  scene,  and  in  all 
the  early  speeches  of  Lear,  the  one  general  sentiment  of  filial  in- 
gratitude prevails  as  the  main-spring  of  the  feelings  ; — in  this 
early  stage  the  outward  object  causing  the  pressure  on  the  mind, 
which  is  not  yet  sufficiently  familiarized  with  the  anguish  for  the 
imagination  to  work  upon  it. 

lb. 

Gon.  Do  you  mark  that,  my  lord? 
Alb.  I  can  not  be  so  partial,  Goneril, 

To  the  great  love  I  bear  you. 
Gon.  Pray  you  cor  tent,  &c. 

Observe  the  baffled  endeavor  of  Goneril  to  act  on  the  fears  ol 
Albany,  and  yet  his  passiveness,  his  inertia  ;  he  is  not  convinced, 
and  yet  he  is  afraid  of  looking  into  the  thing.  Such  character! 
always  yield  to  those  who  will  take  the  trouble  of  governing 


NOTES   ON   LEAR.  141 

them,  or  for  them.     Perhaps,  the  influence  of  a  princess,  whose 
choice  of  him  had  royalized  his  state,  may  be  some  little  excuse 
for  Albany's  weakness, 
lb.  sc.  5. 

Lear.  0  let  me  not  be  mad,  not  mad,  sweet  heaven ! 
Keep  me  in  temper  !  I  would  not  be  mad  ! — • 

The  mind's  own  anticipation  of  madness  !  The  deepest  tragic 
notes  are  often  struck  by  a  half  sense  of  an  impending  blow. 
The  Fool's  conclusion  of  this  act  by  a  grotesque  prattling  seems; 
to  indicate  the  dislocation  of  feeling  that  has  begun  and  is  to  be 
continued. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Edmund's  speech  : —        » 

He  replied, 
Thou  unpossessing  bastard  !  (fee. 

Thus  the  secret  poison  in  Edmund's  own  heart  steals  forth  ; 
and  then  observe  poor  Gloster's — 

Loyal  and  natural  boy  ! 

as  if  praising  the  crime  of  Edmund's  birth  ! 
lb.     Compare  Regan's — 

What,  did  my  father's  godson  seek  your  life? 
He  whom  my  father  named  ? 

with  the  unfeminine  violence  of  her — 

All  vengeance  comes  too  short,  (fee. 

and  yet  no  reference  to  the  guilt,  but  only  to  the  accident,  which 
she  uses  as  an  occasion  for  sneering  at  her  father.  Regan  is  not, 
in  fact,  a  greater,  monster  than  G-oneril,  but  she  has  the  power 
of  casting  more  venom. 

lb.  sc.  2.     Cornwall's  speech  : — 

This  is  some  fellow, 

Who,  having  been  praised  for  bluntness,  doth  affect 

A  saucy  roughness,  (fee. 

In  thus  placing  these  profound  general  truths  in  the  mouths  of 
such  men  as  Cornwall,  Edmund,  Iago,  &c.  Shakspeare  at  once 
gives  them  utterance,  and  yet  shows  how  indefinite  their  applica- 
tion is. 


NOTES   ON  LEAR. 
142 

lb  sc  3      Edgar's  assumed  madness  serves  the  great  purpose 

oftokng  off  par!  of  the  shock  which  would  otherw.e  he  caused 

W  tfe  tfuemldness  of  Lear,  and  further  displays  the  profound 

dnlernce  between  the  two.     In  every  attempt  at  representmg 

sjs^s^*  fr  eareva11  s lis 

lets  Jon  see  a  fixed  purpose,  a  practical  end  m  vtew  ,-,n  I ea  . 
there  is  only  the  brooding  of  the  one  angmsh,  an  eddy  wtthout 
progression. 

lb.  sc.  4.     Lear's  speech  : — 

The  king  wouM  speak  with  Cornwall ;  the  dear  father 

Would  with  his  daughter  speak,  &c. 

*  *  *  * 

No,  hut  not  yet :  may  be  he  is  not  well,  &c. 

The  strong  interest  now  felt  by  Lear  to  try  to  find  excuses  for 
his  daughter  is  most  pathetic. 
lb.  Lear's  speech  : — 

-  Beloved  Regan, 

Thy  sister's  naught ;— 0  Regan,  she  hath  tied 
Sharp-tooth'd  unkindness,  like  a  vulture,  here. 
I  can  scarce  speak  to  thee  --thou'lt  not  believe 
Of  how  deprav'd  a  quality— 0  Regan  I 

Reg.  I  pray  you,  Sir,  take  patience;  I  have  hope, 
You  less  know  how  to  value  her  desert, 
Than  she  to  scant  her  duty. 
Lear.  Say,  how  is  that  ? 

Nothing  is  so  heart-cutting  as  a  cold  unexpected  defence  ol 
palliation^  a  cruelty  passionately  complained  of,  or  so  expressive 
of  thorough  hard-heartedness.  And  feel  the  excessive  horror  o 
Regan's  <  0,  Sir,  you  are  old  '.'-and  then  her  drawing  from  thai 
universal  object  of  reverence  and  indulgence  the  very  reason  fol 
ner  frightful  conclusion — 

Say,  you  have  wrong'd  her  1 

All  Lear's  faults  increase  our  pity  for  him.  We  refuse  to  kncl 
them  otherwise  than  as  means  of  his  Bufferings,  and  aggravate 
of  his  daughter's  ingratitude 


NOTES  ON  LEAK.  j 


lb.     Lear's  speech  : 


O,  reason  not  the  need :  our  basest  beggars 
Are  in  the  poorest  thing  superfluous,  Ac. 


of  ?bbeeb,Ve  that  th\tran9uil%  ^ich  Allows  the  first  stunnW 
of  the  blow  permits  Lear  to  reason.  running 

Act  iii.  sc  4.     0,  what  a  world's  convention  of  agonies  is  here 
AU  external  nature  in  a  storm,  all  moral  nature  Jnv Led  -IL 
real  madness  of  Lear,  the  feigned  madness  of  Edgar  the  bib 

s  en!  wa        ^  *"  *■"""*'  Me%  °f  Kent-Sy  L     a 
scene  was  never  conceived  before  or  since'     Tate  it  W 

picture  for  the  eye  only,  it  is  more  terrific  than  Ly  w  ieh  a  Mi! 

chel  Angelo,  inspired  by  a  Dante,  could  have  conceived    ana 

which  none  hot  a  Michel  Angelo  conld  have  executed OrTet 

t  have  been  uttered  to  the  blind,  the  bowlings  of  nature  would 

seem  converted  into  the  voice  of  conscious  humani  v ThlT 

intvll„thoef ^  fifT °mS  °f  *"*"  d"— t^hl 
terru  ^1  fit  ^1  £^***W.  in- 
;ness  in  the  sixth  scene  ^  *°  ^^  in  foU  mad" 

|     lb.  sc.  7.     Gloster's  blindin-  •— 

feiar^^^-1^  *  -stance  to 
Act  iv.  sc.  6.     Lear's  speech  :— 

[ay  ^y  and  JR,  to  every  thht  I  S  r    A t     ^  .  0MS  *"•  *W    T< 
Fr-     When  the  rain  came  to\et  me  onc^fc      *°  *"  *"  D°  ""*  «** 


The  thunder  recurs   hut  ^till    Qf   «  *      ,. 

feelings.  at  a  greater  dlstance  from  our 

lb.  sc.  7.     Lear's  speech  : 

Where  have  I  been !  Where  am  I  ?-Fair  daylight  *_ 

ttSZSZ? BhmU  CTeQ  *  Jh  pi* 

iTatwS6  affehtinS  retUnl  °f  Lear  to  ~™.  «•*  «" 
I  swlf  ,         Peeches  PrePare  the  mM  &r  the  last  sad 

■  sweet,  consolation  of  the  aged  sufferer's  death  !  "* 


114  NOTES   ON   HAMLET. 


HAMLET. 


Hamlet  was  the  play,  or  rather  Hamlet  himself  was  the  char- 
acter, in  the  intuition  and  exposition  of  which  I  first  made  my 
turn  for  philosophical  criticism,  and  especially  for  insight  into  the 
genius  of  Shakspeare,  noticed.      This  happened  first  among  my  - 
acquaintances,  as  Sir  George  Beaumont  will  bear  witness;  and 
subsequently,  long  before  Schlegel  had  delivered  at  Vienna  the - 
lectures  on  Shakspeare,  which  he  afterwards  published,  I   had 
given  on  the  same  subject  eighteen  lectures   substantially  the. 
same,  proceeding  from  the  very  same  point  of  view,  and  deducing 
the  same  conclusions,  so  far  as  I  either  then  agreed,  or  now  agree, 
with  him.     I  gave  these  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution,  before 
six  or  seven  hundred  auditors  of  rank  and  eminence,  in  the  spring 
of  the  same  year,  in  which  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  a  fellow-lecturer, 
made  his  great  revolutionary  discoveries  in  chemistry,  (v) .   Even 
in  detail  the  coincidence  of  Schlegel  with   my  lectures  was  so 
extraordinary,  that  all  who   at   a  later  period   heard   the   same 
words,  taken  by  me  from  my  notes  of  the  lectures  at  the  Royal 
Institution,  concluded  a  borrowing  on  my  part  from   Schlegel. 
Mr.  Hazlitt,  whose  hatred  of  me  is  in  such  an  inverse  ratio  to 
my  zealous  kindness  towards  him,  as  to  be  defended  by  his  warm-  ; 
est  admirer,  Charles   Lamb — (who,  God  bless  him  !  besides  his  , 
characteristic  obstinacy  of  adherence  to   old  friends,  as  long  at 
least  as  they  are   at  all  down  in  the  world,  is  linked  as  by 
charm  to  Hazlitt's  conversation) — only  as  '  frantic  ;' — Mr.  Hazlit 
I  say,  himself  replied   to   an  assertion  of  my   plagiarism  fro: 
Schlegel  in  these  words  ; — "  That  is  a  lie  ;  for  I  myself  heard  the 
very  same  character  of  Hamlet  from  Coleridge  before  he  went  If 
Germany,  and  when  he  had  neither  read  nor  could  read  a  page 
of  German !"     Now  Hazlitt  was  on  a  visit  to  me  at  my  cottage 
at  Nether  Stowey,  Somerset,  in  the  summer  of  the  year  1798,  in 
the  September  of  which  year  I  first  was  out  of  sight  of  the  shoref 
of  Great  Britain.     Recorded  by  me,  S.  T.  Coleridge,  7th  Janul 
ary,  1819.  ! 

The  seeming  inconsistencies  in  the  conduct  and  character  o:| 
Hamlet  have  long  exercised  the  conjectural  ingenuity  of  critics 
and,  as  we  are  always  loth  to  suppose  that  the  cause  of  defectiv 
apprehension  is  in  ourselves,  the  mystery  has  been  too  common] 

I 


at 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  U5 


explained  by  the  very  easy  process  of  setting  it  down  as  in  fact 
inexplicable,  and  by  resolving  the  phenomenon  into  a  misgrowtb 
or ■  lusus of  the  capricious  and  irregular  genius  of  Shakspeare. 
The  shallow  and  stupid  arrogance  of  these  vulgar  and  indolent 
decisions  I  would  fain  do  my  best  to  expose.     I  believe  the  char- 
acter of  Hamlet  may  be  traced  to  Shakspeare's  deep  and  accu-l 
rate  science  m  mental  philosophy.     Indeed,  that  this  character 
must  have  some  connection  with  the  common  fundamental  laws 
of  our  nature  may  be  assumed  from  the  fact,  that  Hamlet  has 
been  the  darling  of  every  country  in  which  the  literature  of  Eng- 
land has  been  fostered.     In  order  to  understand  him,  it  is  essen- 
tial that  we  should  reflect  on  the  constitution  of  our  own  minds 
Man  is  distinguished  from  the  brute  animals  in  proportion  as 
thought  prevails  over  sense  :  but  in  the  healthy  processes  of  the 
mmd   a  balance  is  constantly  maintained  between  the  impres- 
sions from  outward  objects  and  the  inward  operations  of  the  in- 
tellect :_for  if  there  be  an  overbalance  in  the  contemplative  fac- 
ulty, man  thereby  becomes  the  creature  of  mere  meditation,  and 
loses  his  natural  power  of  action.     Now  one  of  Shakspeare's 
modes  of  creating  characters  is,  to  conceive  any  one  intellectual 
or  moral  faculty  in  morbid  excess,  and  then  to  place  himself     . 
Shakspeare,   thus   mutilated  or   diseased,   under  given  circum- 
stances.    In  Hamlet  he  seems  to  have  wished  to  exemplify  the 
moral  necessity  of  a  due  balance  between  our  attention  to  the 
objects  of  our  senses,  and  our  meditation  on  the  Workings  of  our 
minds,— an  equilibrium  between  the  real  and  the  imaginary! 
worlds.     In  Hamlet  this  balance  is  disturbed:  his  thoughts  and 
the  images  of  his  fancy,  are  far  more  vivid  than  his  actual  per- 
ceptions, and  his  very  perceptions,  instantly  passing  through  the 
nechum  of  his  contemplations,  acquire,  as  they  pass,  a  form  and  a 
fcolor  not  naturally  their  own.     Hence  we  see  a  great,  an  almost 
fenormous,  intellectual  activity,  and  a  proportionate  aversion  to  real 
iLction,  consequent  upon  it,  with  all  its  symptoms  and  accompany- 
ing qualities.     This  character  Shakspeare  places  in  circumstance; 
fnder  which  it  is  obliged  to  act  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  •- 
pmlet  is  brave  and  careless  of  death;  but  he  vacillates  from 
Sensibility,  and  procrastinates  from  thought,  and  loses  the  power  , 
t  action  in  the  energy  of  resolve.     Thus  it  is  that  this  tragedy  l 
Resents  a  direct  contrast  to  that  of  Macbeth  ;  the  one  proceeds 
■  vol.  iv.  n  r 


U6  NOTES   ON   HAMLET. 

with  the  utmost  slowness,  the  other  with  a  crowded  and  breath- 
less rapidity,  (w) 

\  The  effect  of  this  overbalance  of  the  imaginative  power  is 
beautifully  illustrated  in  the  everlasting  broodings  and  superflu- 
ous activities  of  Hamlet's  mind,  which,  unseated  from  its  healthy 
relation,  is  constantly  occupied  with  the  world  within,  and  ab- 
stracted from  the  world  without, — giving  substance  to  shadows, 
and  throwing  a  mist  over  all  common-place  actualities.  It  is  the 
nature  of  thought  to  be  indefinite  ; — definiteness  belongs  to  ex- 
ternal imagery  alone.  Hence  it  is  that  the  sense  of  sublimity 
arises,  not  from  the  sight  of  an  outward  object,  but  from  the  be- 
holder's reflection  upon  it ; — not  from  the  sensuous  impression, 
but  from  the  imaginative  reflex.  Few  have  seen  a  celebrated 
waterfall  without  feeling  something  akin  to  disappointment :  it  is 
only  subsequently  that  the  image  comes  back  full  into  the  mind, 
and  brings  with  it  a  train  of  grand  or  beautiful  associations. 
Hamlet  feels  this  ;  his  senses  are  in  a  state  of  trance,  and  he 
looks  upon  external  things  as  hieroglyphics.     His  soliloquy — 

Oh !  that  this  too,  too  solid  flesh  would  melt,  &c. 

springs  from  that  craving  after  the  indefinite — for  that  which  is 
|  not — which  most  easily  besets  men  of  genius ;  and  the  self-delu- 
sion common  to  this  temper  of  mind  is  finely  exemplified  in  the 
character  which  Hamlet  gives  of  himself: — 

— It  can  not  be 
But  I  am  pigeon-livered,  and  lack  gall 
To  make  oppression  bitter. 

He  mistakes  the  seeing  his  chains  for  the  breaking  of  them, 
delays  action  till  action  is  of  no  use,  and  dies  the  victim  of  mere 
circumstance  and  accident,  (x) 

There  is  a  great  significancy  in  the  names  of  Shakspeare's 
plays.  In  the  Twelfth  Night,  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  As 
You  Like  It,  and  Winter's  Tale,  the  total  effect  is  produced  by  a 
co-ordination  of  the  characters  as  in  a  wreath  of  flowers.  But  in 
Ooriolanus,  Lear,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Hamlet,  Othello,  &c,  the 
"\  effect  arises  from  the  subordination  of  all  to  one,  either  as  the 
prominent  person,  or  the  principal  object.  Cymbeline  is  the  only 
exception;    and  even  that  has  its  advantages  in  preparing  the 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  147 

audience  for  the  chaos  of  time,  place,  and  costume,  by  throwing 
the  date  bac<t  into  a  fabulous  king's  reign. 

But  as  of  more  importance,  so  more  striking,  is  the  judgment 
displayed  by  our  truly  dramatic  poet,  as  well  as  poet  of  the 
drama,  in  the  management  of  his  first  scenes.  With  the  single 
exception  of  Cymbeline,  they  either  place  before  us  at  one  glance 
both  the  past  and  the  future  in  some  effect,  which  implies  the 
continuance  and  full  agency  of  its  cause,  as  in  the  feuds  and 
party-spirit  of  the  servants  of  the  two  houses  in  the  first  scene  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet;  or  in  the  degrading  passion  for  shows  and 
public  spectacles,  and  the  overwhelming  attachment  for  the 
newest  successful  war-chief  in  the  Roman  people,  already  become 
a  populace,  contrasted  with  the  jealousy  of  the  nobles  in  Julius 
Csesar ; — or  they  at  once  commence  the  action  so  as  to  excite  a 
curiosity  for  the  explanation  in  the  following  scenes,  as  in  the 
storm  of  wind  and  waves,  and  the  boatswain  in  the  Tempest, 
instead  of  anticipating  our  curiosity,  as  in  most  other  first  scenes, 
and  in  too  many  other  first  acts ; — or  they  act,  by  contrast  of  dic- 
tion suited  to  the  characters,  at  once  to  heighten  the  effect,  and 
yet  to  give  a  naturalness  to  the  language  and  rhythm  of  the 
principal  personages,  either  as  that  of  Prospero  and  Miranda  by 
the  appropriate  lowness  of  the  style, — or  as  in  King  John,  by  the 
equally  appropriate  stateliness  of  official  harangues  or  narratives, 
so  that  the  after  blank  verse  seems  to  belong  to  the  rank  and 
quality  of  the  speakers,  and  not  to  the  poet; — or  they  strike  at 
once  the  key-note,  and  give  the  predominant  spirit  of  the  play,  as 
in  the  Twelfth  Night  and  in  Macbeth ; — or  finally,  the  first  scene 
comprises  all  these  advantages  at  once,  as  in  Hamlet. 

Compare  the  easy  language  of  common  life,  in  which  this  \ 
drama  commences,  with  the  direful  music  and  wild  wayward 
rhythm  and  abrupt  lyrics  of  the  opening  of  Macbeth.  The  tone 
is  quite  familiar ; — there  is  no  poetic  description  of  night,  no 
elaborate  information  conveyed  by  one  speaker  to  another  of 
what  both  had  immediately  before  their  senses — (such  as  the 
first  distich  in  Addison's  Cato,  which  is  a  translation  into  poetry 
of 'Past  four  o'clock  and  a  dark  morning!'); — and  yet  nothing 
bordering  on  the  comic  on  the  one  hand,  nor  any  striving  of  the 
intellect  on  the  other.  It  is  precisely  the  language  of  sensation 
among  men  who  feared  no  charge  of  effeminacy  for  feeling  what 
thr  y  had  no  want  of  resolution  to  bear.     Yet  the  armor,  the  dead 


148  NOTES   ON   HAMLET. 

silence,  the  watchfulness  that  first  interrupts  it,  the  welcome  relief 
of  the  guard,  the  cold,  the  broken  expressions  of  compelled  atten- 
tion to  bodily  feelings  still  under  control — all  excellently  accord 
with,  and  prepare  for,  the  after  gradual  rise  into  tragedy; — but, 
above  all,  into  a  tragedy,  the  interest  of  which  is  as  eminently 
ad  et  apud  intra,  as  that  of  Macbeth  is  directly  ad  extra. 

In  all  the  best  attested  stories  of  ghosts  and  visions,  as  in  that 
of  Brutus,  of  Archbishop  Cranmer,  that  of  Benvenuto  Cellini 
recorded  by  himself,  and  the  vision  of  Galileo  communicated  by 
him  to  his  favorite  pupil  Torricelli,  the  ghost-seers  were  in  a  state  of 
cold  or  chilling  damp  from  without,  and  of  anxiety  inwardly.  It  has 
been  with  all  of  them  as  with  Francisco  on  his  guard, — alone,  in 
the  depth  and  silence  of  the  night; — ''twas  bitter  cold,  and  they 
were  sick  at  heart,  and  not  a  mouse  stirring.''  The  attention  to 
minute  sounds, — naturally  associated  with  the  recollection  of 
minute  objects,  and  the  more  familiar  and  trifling,  the  more  im- 
pressive from  the  unusualness  of  their  producing  any  impression 
at  all — gives  a  philosophic  pertinency  to  this  last  image ;  but  it 
has  likewise  its  dramatic  use  and  purpose.  For  its  commonness 
in  ordinary  conversation  tends  to  produce  the  sense  of  reality,  and 
at  once  hides  the  poet,  and  yet  approximates  the  reader  or  spec- 
tator to  that  state  in  which  the  highest  poetry  will  appear,  and 
in  its  component  parts,  though  not  in  the  whole  composition, 
really  is,  the  language  of  nature.  If  I  should  not  speak  it,  I  feel 
that  I  should  be  thinking  it ;  — the  voice  only  is  the  poet's, — the 
words  are  my  oavii.  That  Shakspeare  meant  to  put  an  effect  in 
the  actor's  power  in  the  very  first  words — "  Who's  there?" — is 
evident  from  the  impatience  expressed  by  the  startled  Francisco 
in  the  words  that  follow — "  Nay,  answer  me :  stand  and  unfold 
yourself."  A  brave  man  is  never  so  peremptory,  as  when  he 
fears  that  he  is  afraid.  Observe  the  gradual  transition  from  the 
silence  and  the  still  recent  habit  of  listening  in  Francisco's — "I 
think  I  hear  them" — to  the  more  cheerful  call  out,  which  a  good 
actor  would  observe,  in  the — "Stand  ho!  Who  is  there?"  Ber- 
nardo's inquiry  after  Horatio,  and  the  repetition  of  his  name  and 
in  his  oavii  presence  indicate  a  respect  or  an  eagerness  that  implies 
him  as  one  of  the  persons  who  are  in  the  foreground ;  and  the 
skepticism  attributed  to  him, — 


Horatio  says,  'tis  but  our  fantasy ; 

Aud  will  not  let  belief  take  hold  of  him  — 


NOTES  ON  HAMLET.  149 

prepaies  us  for  Hamlet's  after-eulogy  on  him  as  one  whose  blood 
and  judgment  were  happily  commingled.  The  actor  should  also 
be  careful  to  distinguish  the  expectation  and  gladness  of  Bernar- 
do's '"Welcome,  Horatio !'  from  the  mere  courtesy  of  his  'Welcome, 
good  Marcellus !' 

Now  observe  the  admirable  indefiniteness  of  the  first  opening 
out  of  the  occasion  of  all  this  anxiety.  The  preparation  informa- 
tive of  the  audience  is  just  as  much  as  was  precisely  necessary, 
and  no  more ; — it  begins  with  the  uncertainty  appertaining  to  a 
question : — 

Mar.  What !  has  this  thing  appeared  again  to-night  ? — 

Even  the  word  '  again'  has  its  credibilizing  effect.  Then  Horatio, 
the  representative  of  the  ignorance  of  the  audience,  not  himself, 
but  by  Marcellus  to  Bernardo,  anticipates  the  common  solution — 
'  'tis  but  our  fantasy !'  upon  which  Marcellus  rises  into 

This  dreaded  sight,  twice  seen  of  us — 

which  immediately  afterwards  becomes  'this  apparition,'  and 
that,  too,  an  intelligent  spirit,  that  is,  to  be  spoken  to !  Then 
comes  the  confirmation  of  Horatio's  disbelief; — 

Tush  !  tush !  'twill  not  appear  ! — 

and  the  silence,  with  which  the  scene  opened,  is  again  restored  in 
the  shivering  feeling  of  Horatio  sitting  down,  at  such  a  time, 
and.  with  the  two  eye-witnesses,  to  hear  a  story  of  a  ghost,  and 
that,  too,  of  a  ghost  which  had  appeared  twice  before  at  the  very 
same  hour.  In  the  deep  feeling  which  Bernardo  has  of  the 
solemn  nature  of  what  he  is  about  to  relate,  he  makes  an  effort 
to  master  his  own  imaginative  terrors  by  an  elevation  of  style, — 
itself  a  continuation  of  the  effort, — and  by  turning  off  from  the 
apparition,  as  from  something  which  would  force  him  too  deeply 
into  himself,  to  the  outward  objects,  the  realities  of  nature,  which 
had  accompanied  it: — 

Ber.  Last  night  of  all, 
"When  yon  same  star,  that's  westward  from  the  pole, 
Had  made  his  course  to  illume  that  part  of  heaven 
Where  now  it  burns,  Marcellus  and  myself, 
The  bell  then  beating  one — 

This  passage  seems  to  contradict  the  critical  law  that  what  is 


150  NOTES   OX   HAMLET. 

told,  makes  a  faint  impression  compared  with  what  is  beholden; 
for  it  does  indeed  convey  to  the  mind  more  than  the  eye  can  see ; 
whilst  the  interruption  of  tli3  narrative  at  the  very  moment  when 
we  are  most  intensely  listening  for  the  sequel,  and  have  our 
thoughts  diverted  from  the  dreaded  sight  in  expectation  of  the 
desired,  yet  almost  dreaded,  tale — this  gives  all  the  suddenness 
and  surprise  of  the  original  appearance  ; — 

Mar.  Peace,  break  thee  off;  look,  where  it  comes  again  !— 

Note  the  judgment  displayed  in  having  the  two  persons  present, 
who,  as  having  seen  the  Ghost  before,  are  naturally  eager  in 
confirming  their  former  opinions, — whilst  the  skeptic  is  silent,  and 
after  having  been  twice  addressed  by  his  friends,  answers  with 
two  hasty  syllables — '  Most  like,' — and  a  confession  of  horror  : — 

It  harrows  me  with  fear  and  wonder. 

0  heaven  !  words  are  wasted  on  those  who  feel,  and  to  those 
who  do  not  feel  the  exquisite  judgment  of  Shakspeare  in  this 
scene,  what  can  be  said  ? — Hume  himself  could  not  but  have  had 
faith  in  this  Ghost  dramatically,  let  his  anti-ghostism  have  been  as 
strong  as  Samson  against  other  ghosts  less  powerfully  raised. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Mar.  Good  now,  sit  down,  and  tell  me,  he  that  knows 
Why  this  same  strict  and  most  observant  watch,  (fee. 

How  delightfully  natural  is  the  transition  to  the  retrospective 
narrative  !  And  observe,  upon  the  Ghost's  reappearance,  how 
much  Horatio's  courage  is  increased  by  having  translated  the  late 
individual  spectator  into  general  thought  and  past  experience, — 
and  the. sympathy  of  Marcellus  and  Bernardo  with  his  patriotic 
surmises  in  daring  to  strike  at  the  Ghost  ;  whilst  in  a  moment, 
upon  its  vanishing  the  former  solemn  awe-stricken  feeling  re- 
turns upon  them  : — 

We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majestical, 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence. — 

Tb      Horatio's  speech  : — 

I  have  heard/ 
The  cock,  that  is  the  trumpet  to  the  morn, 
Doth  with  his  lofty  and  shrill  sounding  throat 
Awake  the  god  of  day,  <fec. 


NOTES   ON    HAMLET.  151 

No  Addison  could  be  more  careful  to  be  poetical  in  diction  than 
Shakspeare  in  providing  the  grounds  and  sources  of  its  propriety. 
But  how  to  elevate  a  thing  almost  mean  by  its  familiarity,  young 
poets  may  learn  in  this  treatment  of  the  cock-crow, 
lb.     Horatio's  speech  : — 

And,  by  my  advice, 
Let  us  impart  what  we  have  seen  to-night 
Unto  young  Hamlet ;  for,  upon  my  life, 
The  spirit,  dumb  to  us,  will  speak  to  him. 

Note  the  unobtrusive  and  yet  fully  adequate  mode  of  introducing 
the  main  character,  '  young  Hamlet,'  upon  whom  is  transferred 
all  the  interest  excited  for  the  acts  and  concerns  of  the  king  his 
father. 

lb.  sc.  2.  The  audience  are  now  relieved  by  a  change  of  scene 
to  the  royal  court,  in  order  that  Hamlet  may  not  have  to  take  up 
the  leavings  of  exhaustion.  In  the  king's  speech,  observe  the  set 
and  pedantically  antithetic  form  of  the  sentences  when  touching 
that  which  galled  the  heels  of  conscience, — the  strain  of  undig- 
nified rhetoric, — and  yet  in  what  follows  concerning  the  public 
weal,  a  certain  appropriate  majesty.  Indeed  was  he  not  a  royal 
brother  ? — 

lb.  King's  speech  : — 

And  now,  Laertes,  what's  the  news  with  you  ?  &c. 

Thus  with  great  art  Shakspeare  introduces  a  most  important,  but 
still  subordinate  character  first,  Laertes,  who  is  yet  thus  graciously 
treated  in  consequence  of  the  assistance  given  to  the  election  of 
the  late  king's  brother  instead  of  his  son  by  Polonius. 

lb. 

Ham.  A  little  more  than  kin,  and  less  than  kind. 
King.  How  is  it  that  the  clouds  still  hang  on  you  ? 
Ham.  Not  so,  my  lord,  I  am  too  much  i'  the  sun. 


Hamlet  opens  his  mouth  with  a  playing  on  words,  the  com- 
plete absence  of  which  throughout  characterizes  Macbeth.  This 
playing  on  words  may  be  attributed  to  many  causes  or  motives,  as 
either  to  an  exuberant  activity  of  mind,  as  in  the  higher  comedy 
01  Shakspeare  generally  ; — or  to  an  imitation  of  it  as  a  mere 
fashion,  as  if  it  were  said — '  Is  not  this  better  than  groaning  V 
— or  to  a  contemptuous  exultation  in  minds  vulgarized  and  over- 


152  NOTES   ON   HAMLET. 

set  by  their  success,  as  in  the  poetic  instance  of  Milton's  Devils  in 
the  battle  ; — or  it  is  the  language  of  resentment,  as  is  familiar 
to  every  one  who  has  witnessed  the  quarrels  of  the  lower  orders, 
where  there  is  invariably  a  profusion  of  punning  invective, 
whence,  perhaps,  nicknames  have  in  a  considerable  degree  sprung 
up  ; — or  it  is  the  language  of  suppressed  passion,  and  especially 
of  a  hardly  smothered  personal  dislike.  The  first  and  last  of 
these  combine  in  Hamlet's  case  ;  and  I  have  little  doubt  that 
Farmer  is  right  in  supposing  the  equivocation  carried  on  in  the 
expression  '  too  much  i'  the  sun,'  or  son. 
lb. 

Ham.     Ay,  madam,  it  is  common. 

Here  observe  Hamlet's  delicacy  to  his  mother,  and  how  the  sup- 
pression prepares  him  for  the  overflow  in  the  next  speech,  in 
which  his  character  is  more  developed  by  bringing  forward  his 
aversion  to  externals,  and  which  betrays  his  habit  of  brooding 
ever  the  world  within  him,  coupled  with  a  prodigality  of  beauti- 
ful words,  which  are  the  half-embodyings  of  thought,  and  are  more 
than  thought,  and  have  an  outness,  a  reality  sui  generis,  and  yet 
"1  contain  their  correspondence  and  shadowy  affinity  to  the  images 
and  movements  within.  ISTcte  also  Hamlet's  silence  to  the  long 
speech  of  the  king  which  follows,  and  his  respectful,  but  general, 
answer  to  his  mother. 

Tb.     Hamlet's  first  soliloquy  : — 

0,  that  this  too  too  solid  flesh  would  melt. 
Thaw,  and  resolve  itself  into  a  dew  !  &c. 

This  tcedium  vitce  is  a  common  oppression  on  minds  cast  in  the 
Hamlet  mould,  and  is  caused  by  disproportionate  mental  exertion, 
Avhich  necessitates  exhaustion  of  bodily  feeling.  Where  there  is 
a  just  coincidence  of  external  and  internal  action,  pleasure  is  al-  ;, 
ways  the  result ;  but  where  the  former  is  deficient,  and  the 
mind's  appetency  of  the  ideal  is  unchecked,  realities  will  seem 
cold  and  unmoving.  In  such  cases,  passion  combines  itself  with 
the  indefinite  alone.  In  this  mood  of  his  mind  the  relation  of  the 
appearance  of  his  father's  spirit  in  arms  is  made  all  at  once  to 
Hamlet  : — it  is — Horatio's  speech,  in  particular — a  perfect  model 
of  the  true  style  of  dramatic  narrative  ; — the  purest  poetry,  and 
yet  in  the  most  natural  language,  equally  remote  from  the  ink 
horn  and  the  plough. 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  153 

lb.  sc.  3.  This  scene  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  Shakspeare's 
lyric  movements  in  the  play,  and  the  skill  with  which  it  is  inter- 
woven with  the  dramatic  parts  is  peculiarly  an  excellence  of  our 
poet.  You  experience  the  sensation  of  a  pause  without  the  sense 
of  a  stop.  You  will  observe  in  Ophelia's  short  and  general 
answer  to  the  long  speech  of  Laertes  the  natural  carelessness  of 
innocence,  which  can  not  think  such  a  code  of  cautions  and  pru- 
dences necessary  to  its  own  preservation. 

lb.     Speech  of  Polonius : — (in  Stockdale's  edition.) 

Or  (not  to  crack  the  wind  of  the  poor  phrase) 
Wronging  it  thus,  you'll  tender  me  a  fool. 

I  suspect  this  '  wronging'  is  here  used  much  in  the  same  sense 
as  '  wringing'  or  '  wrenching  ;'  and  that  the  parenthesis  should 
be  extended  to  '  thus.'^ 

lb.     Speech  of  Polonius  : — 

How  prodigal  the  soul 

Lends  the  tongue  vows  : — these  blazee,  daughter,  &e. 

A  spondee  has,  I  doubt  not,  dropped  out  of  the  text.  Either 
insert  '  Go  to'  after  '  vows  ;' — 

Lends  the  tongue  vows :  Go  to,  these  blazes,  daughter — 

or  read 

Lends  the  tongue  vows  : — These  blazes,  daughter,  mark  you — 

Shakspeare  never  introduces  a  catalectic  line  without  intending 
an  equivalent  to  the  foot  omitted  in  the  pauses,  or  the  dwelling 
emphasis,  or  the  diffused  retardation.  I  do  not,  however,  deny 
that  a  good  actor  might  by  employing  the  last-mentioned  means, 
namely,  the  retardation,  or  solemn  knowing  drawl,  supply  the 
missing  spondee  with  good  effect.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  in 
this  or  any  other  of  the  foregoing  speeches  of  Polonius,  Shak- 
speare meant  to  bring  out  the  senility  or  weakness  of  that  person- 
age's mind.  In  the  great  ever-recurring  dangers  and  duties  of 
life,  where  to  distinguish  the  fit  objects  for  the  application  of  the 
maxims  collected  by  the  experience  of  a  long  life,  requires  no 
fineness  of  tact,  as  in  the  admonitions  to  his  son  and  daughter, 
Polmius  is  uniformly  made  respectable.     But  if  an  actor  were 

*  Tt  is  so  pointed  in  the  modern  editions. — Ed. 


154  NOTES   ON   HAMLET. 

even  capable  of  catching  these  shades  in  the  character,  the  pit 
and  the  gallery  would  be  malcontent  at  their  exhibition.  It  is  to 
Hamlet  that  Polonius  is,  and  is  meant  to  be,  contemptible,  be- 
cause in  inwardness  and  uncontrollable  activity  of  movement, 
Hamlet's  mind  is  the  logical  contrary  to  that  of  Polonius,  and  be- 
sides, as  I  have  observed  before,  Hamlet  dislikes  the  man  as 
false  to  his  true  allegiance  in  the  matter  of  the  succession  to  the 
croi7n. 

lb.  sc.  4,  The  unimportant  conversation  with  which  this  scene 
opens  is  a  proof  of  Shakspeare's  minute  knowledge  of  human 
nature.  It  is  a  well-established  fact,  that  on  the  brink  of  any 
serious  enterprise,  or  event  of  moment,  men  almost  invariably 
endeavor  to  elude  the  pressure  of  their  own  thoughts  by  turning 
aside  to  trivial  objects  and  familiar  circumstances  :  thus  this  dia- 
logue on  the  platform  begins  with  remarks  on  the  coldness  of  the 
air,  and  inquiries,  obliquely  connected,  indeed,  with  the  expected 
hour  of  the  visitation,  but  thrown  out  in  a  seeming  vacuity  of 
topics,  as  to  the  striking  of  the  clock  and  so  forth.  The  same 
desire  to  escape  from  the  impending  thought  is  carried  on  in 
Hamlet's  account  of,  and  moralizing  on,  the  Danish  custom  of 
wassailing  :  he  runs  off  from  the  particular  to  the  universal,  and 
in  his  repugnance  to  personal  and  individual  concerns,  escapes, 
as  it  were,  from  himself  in  generalizations,  and  smothers  the  im- 
patience and  uneasy  feelings  of  the  moment  in  abstract  reasoning. 
Besides  this,  another  purpose  is  answered  ; — for  by  thus  entang- 
ling the  attention  of  the  audience  in  the  nice  distinctions  and 
parenthetical  sentences  of  this  speech  of  Hamlet's,  Shakspeare 
takes  them  completely  by  surprise  on  the  appearance  of  the 
G-host,  which  comes  upon  them  in  all  the  suddenness  of  its  vis- 
ionary character.  Indeed,  no  modern  writer  would  have  dared, 
like  Shakspeare,  to  have  preceded  this  last  visitation  by  two  dis- 
tinct appearances, — or  could  have  contrived  that  the  third  should 
rise  upon  the  former  two  in  impressiveness  and  solemnity  of  in- 
terest. 

But  in  addition  to  all  the  other  excellences  of  Hamlet's  speech 
concerning  the  wassel-music — so  finely  revealing  the  predominant 
idealism,  the  ratiocinative  meditativeness,  of  his  character — it 
has  the  advantage  of  giving  nature  and  probability  to  the  impas- 
sioned continuity  of  the  speech  instantly  directed  to  the  Ghost. 
The  momentum  had  been  given  to  his  mental  activity ;  the  full 


II 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  155 

current  of  the  thoughts  and  words  had  set  in,  and  the  very  for- 
getfulness,  in  the  fervor  of  his  augmentation,  of  the  purpose  for 
which  he  was  there,  aided  in  preventing  the  appearance  from 
benumbing  the  mind.  Consequently,  it  acted  as  a  new  impulse, 
— a  sudden  stroke  which  increased  the  velocity  of  the  body  al- 
ready in  motion,  whilst  it  altered  the  direction.  The  co-presence 
of  Horatio,  Marcellus,  and  Bernardo  is  most  judiciously  contrived  ; 
for  it  renders  the  courage  of  Hamlet  and  his  impetuous  eloquence 
perfectly  intelligible.  The  knowledge, — the  unthought  of  con- 
sciousness,— the  sensation, — of  human  auditors — of  flesh  and 
blood  sympathists — acts  as  a  support  and  a  stimulation  a  tergo, 
while  the  front  of  the  mind,  the  whole  consciousness  of  the 
speaker,  is  filled,  yea,  absorbed,  by  the  apparition.  Add  too,  that 
the  apparition  itself  has  by  its  previous  appearances  been  brought 
nearer  to  a  thing  of  this  world.  This  accrescence  of  objectivity 
in  a  Ghost  that  yet  retains  all  its  ghostly  attributes  and  fearful 
subjectivity,  is  truly  wonderful. 
Tb.  sc.  5.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

O  all  you  host  of  heaven !     0  earth !     What  else  ? 
And  shall  I  couple  hell  ? — 

I  remember  nothing  equal  to  this  burst  unless  it  be  the  first 
speech  of  Prometheus  in  the  Greek  drama,  after  the  exit  of  Vul- 
can and  the  two  Afrites.  But  Shakspeare  alone  could  have  pro- 
duced the  vow  of  Hamlet  to  make  his  memory  a  blank  of  all 
maxims  and  generalized  truths,  that  '  observation  had  copied 
there,' — followed  immediately  by  the  speaker  noting  down  the 
generalized  fact, 


lb. 


That  one  may  smile,  and  smile,  and  be  a  villain ! 

Mar.  Hillo,  ho,  ho,  my  lord ! 

Ham.  Hillo,  ho,  ho,  boy !  come  bird,  come,  <fec. 


This  part  of  the  scene  after  Hamlet's  interview  with  the  Ghost 
has  been  charged  with  an  improbable  eccentricity.  But  the  truth 
is,  that  after  the  mind  has  been  stretched  beyond  its  usual  pitch 
and  tone,  it  must  either  sink  into  exhaustion  and  inanity,  or  seek 
relief  by  change.  It  is  thus  well  known,  that  persons  conversant 
in  deeds  of  cruelty  contrive  to  escape  from  conscience  by  connect- 
ing something  of  the  ludicrous  with  them,  and  by  inventing  grn- 


156  NOTES   ON  HAMLET. 

tesque  terms  and  a  certain  technical  phraseology  to  disguise  the 
horror  of  their  practices.  Indeed,  paradoxical  as  it  may  appear, 
the  terrible  by  a  law  of  the  human  mind  always  touches  on  the 
verge  of  the  ludicrous.  Both  arise  from  the  perception  of  some- 
thing out  of  the  common  order  of  things — something,  in  fact,  out 
of  its  place ;  and  if  from  this  we  can  abstract  danger,  the  un- 
oommonness  will  alone  remain,  and  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  bo 
excited.  The  close  alliance  of  these  opposites — they  are  not  con- 
traries— appears  from  the  circumstance,  that  laughter  is  equally 
the  expression  of  extreme  anguish  and  horror  as  of  joy  :  as  there 
are  tears  of  sorrow  and  tears  of  joy,  so  is  there  a  laugh  of  terror 
and  a  laugh  of  merriment.  These  complex  causes  will  naturally 
have  produced  in  Hamlet  the  disposition  to  escape  from  his  own 
^>  feelings  of  the  overwhelming  and  supernatural  by  a  wild  transi- 
tion to  the  ludicrous, — a  sort  of  cunning  bravado,  bordering  on 
the  nights  of  delirium.  For  you  may,  perhaps,  observe  that  Ham- 
let's wildness  is  but  half  false ;  he  plays  that  subtle  trick  of  pretend- 
ing to  act  only  when  he  is  very  near  really  being  what  he  acts. 

The  subterraneous  speeches  of  the  Ghost  are  hardly  defensi- 
ble : — but  I  would  call  your  attention  to  the  characteristic  differ- 
ence between  this  Ghost,  as  a  superstition  connected  with  the 
most  mysterious  truths  of  revealed  religion, — and  Shakspeare's 
consequent  reverence  in  his  treatment  of  it, — and  the  foul  earthly 
witcheries  and  wild  language  in  Macbeth. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Polonius  and  Reynaldo. 

In  all  things  dependent  on,  or  rather  made  up  of,  fine  address, 
the  manner  is  no  more  or  otherwise  rememberable  than  the  light 
motions,  steps,  and  gestures  of  youth  and  health.  But  this  is  al- 
most every  thing  : — no  wonder,  therefore,  if  that  which  can  be 
put  down  by  rule  in  the  memory  should  appear  to  us  as  mere 
poring,  maudlin,  cunning, — slyness  blinking  through  the  watery 
eye  of  superannuation.  So  in  this  admirable  scene,  Polonius, 
who  is  throughout  the  skeleton  of  his  own  former  skill  and  state- 
craft, hunts  the  trail  of  policy  at  a  dead  scent,  supplied  by  the 
weak  fever-smell  in  his  own  nostrils. 

lb.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Polonius  : — 

My  liege,  and  madam,  to  expostulate,  Ac. 
Warburton's  note. 
Then  as  to  the  jingles,  and  play  on  words,  let  us  but  look  into  the  ser- 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  157 

mons  of  Dr.  Donne  (the  wittiest  man  of  that  age),  and  we  shall  find  them 
full  of  this  vein. 

I  have,  and  that  most  carefully,  read  Dr.  Donne's  sermons,  and 
find  none  of  these  jingles.  The  great  art  of  an  orator — to  make 
whatever  he  talks  of  appear  of  importance — this,  indeed,  Donne 
has  effected  with  consummate  skill. 

It 

Ham.  Excellent  well ; 
You  are  a  fishmonger. 

Tnat  is,  you  are  sent  to  fish  out  this  secret.  This  is  Hamlet's 
own  meaning. 

lb 

Ham.  For  if  the  sun  breeds  maggots  in  a  dead  dog, 
Being  a  god,  kissing  carrion — 

These  purposely  obscure  lines,  I  rather  think,  refer  to  some  thought 
in  Hamlet's  mind,  contrasting  the  lovely  daughter  with  such  a 
tedious  old  fool,  her  father,  as  he,  Hamlet,  represents  Polonius  to 
himself : — '  Why,  fool  as  he  is,  he  is  some  degrees  in  rank  above 
a  dead  dog's  carcass ;  and  if  the  sun,  being  a  god  that  kisses 
carrion,  can  raise  life  out  of  a  dead  dog, — why  may  not  good 
fortune,  that  favors  fools,  have  raised  a  lovely  girl  out  of  this 
dead-alive  old  fool  ?'  Warburton  is  often  led  astray,  in  his  inter- 
pretations, by  his  attention  to  general  positions  without  the  due 
Shaksperian  reference  to  what  is  probably  passing  in  the  mind 
of  his  speaker,  characteristic,  and  expository  of  his  particular 
character  and  present  mood.     The  subsequent  passage, — 

0  Jephtha,  judge  of  Israel !  what  a  treasure  hadst  thou.'. 

is  confirmatory  of  my  view  of  these  lines, 
lb. 

Ham.  You  can  not,  Sir,  take  from  me  any  thing  that  I  will  more  willing 
ly  part  withal ;  except  my  life,  except  my  life,  except  my  life. 

This  repetition  strikes  me  as  most  admirable, 
lb. 

Ham.  Then  are  our  beggars,  bodies  ;  and  our  monarchs,  and  out-stretched 
heroes,  the  beggars'  shadows. 

I  do  not  understand  this  ;  and  Shakspeare  seems  to  have  in- 


158  NOTES   ON  HAMLET. 

tended  the  meaning  not  to  be  more  than  snatched  at  : — '  By  my 
fay,  I  can  not  reason  !' 
lb. 

The  rugged  Pyrrhus — be  whose  sable  arms,  &a 

This  admirable  substitution  of  the  epic  for  the  dramatic,  giving 
such  a  reality  to  the  impassioned  dramatic  diction  of  Shakspeare's 
own  dialogue,  and  authorized  too,  by  the  actual  style  of  the  tra- 
gedies before  his  time  (Porrex  and  Ferrex,  Titus  Andronicus,  &c), 
is  well  worthy  of  notice.  The  fancy,  that  a  burlesque  was  in- 
tended, sinks  below  criticism  :  the  lines,  as  epic  narrative,  are 
superb. 

In  the  thoughts,  and  even  in  the  separate  parts  of  the  diction, 
this  description  is  highly  poetical  :  in  truth,  taken  by  itself,  that 
is  its  fault  that  it  is  too  poetical  ! — the  language  of  lyric  vehe- 
mence and  epic  pomp,  and  not  of  the  drama.  But  if  Shakspeare 
had  made  the  diction  truly  dramatic,  where  would  have  been 
the  contrast  between  Hamlet  and  the  play  in  Hamlet  ?  (y) 

lb. 

bad  seen  tbe  mobled  queen,  &c. 

A  mob-cap  is  still  a  word  in  common  use  for  a  morning-cap, 
which  conceals  the  whole  head  of  hair,  and  passes  under  the 
chin.  It  is  nearly  the  same  as  the  night-cap,  that  is,  it  is  an  im- 
itation of  it,  so  as  to  answer  the  purpose  ('  I  am  not  drest  for 
company'),  and  yet  reconciling  it  with  neatness  and  perfect, 
purity. 

lb.     Hamlet's  soliloquy  : — 

O,  what  a  rogue  and  peasant  slave  am  I !  &c. 

This  is  Shakspeare's  own  attestation  to  the  truth  of  the  idea 
of  Hamlet  which  I  have  before  put  forth, 
lb. 

Tbe  spirit  tbat  I  have  seen, 

May  be  a  devil :  and  tbe  devil  batb  power 

To  assume  a  pleasing  shape  ;  yea,  and,  perhaps 

Out  of  my  weakness,  and  my  melancholy, 

(As  he  is  very  potent  with  such  spirits) 

Abuses  me  to  damn  me. 

See  Sir  Thomas  Brown  : — 

I  believe that  those  apparitions  and  ghosts  of  departed  persons 

are  not  the  wandering  souls  of  men,  but  the  unquiet  walks   of  devils, 


NOTES   ON  HAMLET.  159 

prompting  and  suggesting  us  unto  mischief,  blood,  and  villany,  instilling 
and  stealing  into  our  hearts,  that  the  blessed  spirits  are  not  at  rest  in  their 
graves,  but  wander  solicitous  of  the  affairs  of  the  world.  Relig.  Med.  pt. 
i.  sec.  37. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1.     Hamlet's  soliloquy  : — 

To  be,  or  not  to  be,  that  is  the  question,  (fee. 

This  speech  is  of  absolutely  universal  interest, —and  yet  to 
which  of  all  Shakspeare's  characters  could  it  have  been  appro- 
priately given  but  to  Hamlet  ?  For  Jaques  it  would  have  been 
too  deep,  and  for  lago  too  habitual  a  communion  with  the  heart ; 
which  in  every  man  belongs,  or  ought  to  belong,  to  all  mankind. 

Tb. 

That  undiscover'd  country,  from  whose  bourne 

No  traveller  returns. — 

Theobald's  note  in  defence  of  the  supposed  contradiction  of 
this  in  the  apparition  of  the  Ghost. 

0  miserable  defender  !  If  it  be  necessary  to  remove  the  ap- 
parent contradiction, — if  it  be  not  rather  a  great  beauty, — surely 
it  were  easy  to  say,  that  no  traveller  returns  to  this  world,  as  to 
his  home  or  abiding-place. 

Tb. 

Ham.  Ha,  ha !  are  you  honest  ? 

Oph.  My  lord  ? 
Ham.  Are  you  fair  ? 

Here  it  is  evident  that  the  penetrating  Hamlet  perceives,  from 
the  strange  and  forced  manner  of  Ophelia,  that  the  sweet  girl 
was  not  acting  a  part  of  her  own,  but  was  a  decoy  ;  and  his 
after-speeches  are  not  so  much  directed  to  her  as  to  the  listeners 
and  spies.  Such  a  discovery  in  a  mood  so  anxious  and  irritable 
accounts  for  a  certain  harshness  in  him  ; — and  yet  a  wild  up- 
working  of  love,  sporting  with  opposites  in  a  wilful  self-torment- 
ing strain  of  irony,  is  perceptible  throughout.  '  I  did  love  you 
once  ;' — c  I  lov'd  you  not  ;' — and  particularly  in  his  enumeration 
of  the  faults  of  the  sex  from  which  Ophelia  is  so  free,  that  the 
mere  freedom  therefrom  constitutes  her  character.  Note  Shak- 
speare's charm  of  composing  the  female  character  by  the  absence 
of  characters,  that  is,  marks  and  out-jottings. 
lb.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

1  say,  we  will  have  no  more  marriages  :  those  that  are  married  already, 
all  but  one,  shall  live :  the  rest  shall  keep  as  thev  are. 


160  NOTES  ON  HAMLET. 

Observe  this  dallying  with  the  inward  purpose,  characteristic 
of  one  who  had  not  brought  his  mind  to  the  steady  acting  point. 
He  would  fain  sting  the  uncle's  mind  ;— but  to  stab. his  body  !— 
The  soliloquy  of  Ophelia,  which  follows,  is  the  perfection  of  love 
— so  exquisitely  unselfish  ! 

lb  sc.  2.  This  dialogue  of  Hamlet  with  the  players  is  one  ot 
the  happiest  instances  of  Shakspeare's  power  of  diversifying  the 
Bcene  whilt  he  is  carrying  on  the  plot. 

lb. 

Ham.  My  lord,  you  play'd  once  i'  the  university,  you  say  ?  {To  Polonius) 
To  have  kept  Hamlet's  love  for  Ophelia  before  the  audience  in 
any  direct  form,  would  have  made  a  breach  in  the  unity  of  the 
interest ;— but  yet  to  the  thoughtful  reader  it  is  suggested  by  his 
spite  to  poor  Polonius,  whom  he  can  not  let  rest. 

lb.  The  style  of  the  interlude  here  is  distinguished  from  the 
real  dialogue  by  rhyme,  as  in  the  first  interview  with  the  players 
by  epic  verse. 

lb. 

Bos.  My  lord,  you  once  did  love  me. 

Ham.  So  I  do  still,  by  these  pickers  and  stealers. 

I  never  heard  an  actor  give  this  word  'so'  its  proper  emphasis. 
Shakspeare's  meaning  is-'  lov'd  you  ?  Hum !— so  I  do  still,'  &c. 
There  has  been  no  change  in  my  opinion  :— I  think  as  ill  of  you 
as  I  did.  Else  Hamlet  tells  an  ignoble  falsehood,  and  a  useless 
one,  as  the  last  speech  to  Guildenstern— '  Why,  look  you  now,' 
&c. — proves. 

lb.     Hamlet's  soliloquy  : — 

Now  could  I  drink  hot  blood, 
And  do  such  business  as  the  bitter  day 
Would  quake  to  look  on. 

The  utmost  at  which  Hamlet  arrives,  is  a  disposition,  a  mood, 
to  do  something  ;— but  what  to  do,  is  still  left  undecided,  while 
every  word  he  utters  tends  to  betray  his  disguise.  Yet  observe 
how  perfectly  equal  to  any  call  of  the  moment  is  Hamlet,  let  it 
only  not  be  for  the  future. 

lb.  sc.  4.  Speech  of  Polonius.  Polonius's  volunteer  obtrusion 
of  himself  into  this  business,  while  it  is  appropriate  to  his  char- 
acter,  still  itching  after  former  importance,  removes  all  likehhocd 


NOTES   ON   HAMLET.  101 

that  Hamlet  should  suspect  his  presence,  and  jrevents  us  from 
making  his  death  injure  Hamlet  in.  our  opinion, 
lb.     The  king's  speech  : — 

O,  my  offence  is  rank,  it  smells  to  heaven,  &c. 

This  speech  well  marks  the  difference  between  crime  and  guilt 
of  habit.  The  conscience  here  is  still  admitted  to  audience. 
Nay,  even  as  an  audible  soliloquy,  it  is  far  less  improbable  than 
is  supposed  by  such  as  have  watched  men  only  in  the  beaten 
road  of  their  feelings.  But  the  final — '  all  may  be  well !'  is  re- 
markable ; — the  degree  of  merit  attributed  by  the  self-flattering 
soul  to  its  own  struggle,  though  baffled,  and  to  the  indefinite 
half-promise,  half-command,  to  persevere  in  religious  duties.  The 
solution  is  in  the  divine  medium  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  ex- 
piation : — not  what  you  have  done,  but  what  you  are,  must  de- 
termine. 

lb.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

Now  might  I  do  it,  pat,  now  he  is  praying  : 
And  now  I'll  do  it : — And  so  he  goes  to  heaven  : 
And  so  am  I  reveuged  ?     That  would  be  scann'd,  &o. 

Dr.  Johnson's  mistaking  of  the  marks  of  reluctance  and  procras- 
tination for  impetuous,  horror-striking  fiendishness  ! — Of  such 
importance  is  it  to  understand  the  germ  of  a  character.  But  the 
interval  taken  by  Hamlet's  speech  is  truly  awful  !     And  then — 

My  words  fly  up,  my  thoughts  remain  below : 
Words,  without  thoughts,  never  to  heaven  go, — 

0  what  a  lesson  concerning  the  essential  difference  between 
wishing  and  willing,  and  the  folly  of  all  motive-mongering,  while 
the  individual  self  remains  ! 

Tb.  sc.  4. 

Ham.  A  bloody  deed  ; — almost  as  bad,  good  mother, 
As  kill  a  king,  and  marry  with  his  brother. 
Queen.  As  kill  a  king  ? 

1  confess  that  Shakspeare  has  left  the  character  of  the  Queen 
in-  an  unpleasant  perplexity.  "Was  she,  or  was  she  not,  conscious 
of  the  fratricide  ? 

Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

Ros.  Take  you  me  for  a  sponge,  my  lord  ? 


162  NOTES  ON  HAMLET. 

Ham.  Ay,  Sir ;  that  soaks  up  the  King's  countenance,  his  rewards,  hia 
authorities,  &c. 

Hamlet's  madness  is  made  to  consist  in  the  free  utterance  of 
all  the  thoughts  that  had  passed  through  his  mind  before  ; — in 
fact,  in  telling  home-truths. 

Act  iv.  sc.  5.  Ophelia's  singing.  0,  note  the  conjunction 
here  of  these  two  thoughts  that  had  never  subsisted  in  disjunc- 
tion, the  love  for  Hamlet,  and  her  filial  love,  with  the  guileless 
floating  on  the  surface  of  her  pure  imagination  of  the  cautions  so 
lately  expressed,  and  the  fears  not  too  delicately  avowed,  by  her 
father  and  brother,  concerning  the  dangers  to  which  her  honor 
lay  exposed.  Thought,  affliction,  passion,  murder  itself — she 
turns  to  favor  and  prettiness.  This  play  of  association  is  instan- 
ced in  the  close  : —  » 

My  brother  shall  know  of  it,  and  I  thank  you  for  your  good  counsel . 

Tb.  Gentleman's  speech  : — 

And  as  the  world  were  now  but  to  begin 
Antiquity  forgot,  custom  not  known, 
The  ratifiers  and  props  of  every  ward — 
They  cry,  (fee. 

Fearful  and  self-suspicious  as  I  always  feel,  when  I  seem  to  set 
an  error  of  judgment  in  Shakspeare,  yet  I  can  not  reconcile  tin 
cool,  and,  as  Warburton  calls  it,  '  rational  and  consequential,'  re- 
flection in  these  lines  with  the  anonymousness,  or  the  alarm,  of 
this  Gentleman  or  Messenger,  as  he  is  called  in  other  editions. 

Tb.  King's  speech  : — 

There's  such  divinity  doth  hedge  a  king, 
That  treason  can  but  ] 
Acts  little  of  his  will. 


That  treason  can  but  peep  to  what  it  would, 


Proof,  as  indeed  all  else  is,  that  Shakspeare  never  intended  us 
to  see  the  King  with  Hamlet's  eyes  ;  though,  I  suspect,  the 
managers  have  long  done  so 

lb.  Speech  of  Laertes  : — 

To  hell,  allegiance  !  vows,  to  the  blackest  devil ! 

Laertes  is  a  good  character,  but,  &c.     Warbukton. 

Mercy  on  Warburton's  notion  of  goodness  !  Please  to  refer  tc 
the  seventh  scene  of  this  act : — 


NOTES   ON  HAMLET.  1G3 

I  will  do  it ; 

And  for  this  purpose  I'll  anoint  my  sword,  &c. 

uttered  by  Laertes  after  the  King's  description  of  Hamlet ;- 

He  being  remiss, 
Most  generous,  and  free  from  all  contriving, 
Will  not  peruse  the  foils. 

Yet  I  acknowledge  that  Shakspeare  evidently  wishes,  as  much  as 
possible  to  spare  the  character  of  Laertes.-to  break  the  extreme 
turpitude  of  his  consent  to  become  an  agent  and  accomplice  of 
the .King,  treachery  ;_and  to  this  end  he  re-introduces  Ophelia 
at  the  close  of  this  scene  to  afford  a  probable  stimnlus  of  passion 
in  her  brother.  r 

lb.  sc.  6  Hamlet's  capture  by  the  pirates.  This  is  almost  the 
only  play  of  Shakspeare,  in  which  mere  accidents,  independent 
of  all  will,  form  an  essential  part  of  the  plot  ;_but  here  how  ju- 
dicious y  m  keeping  with  the  character  of  the  over-meditative 
Hamlet,  ever  at  last  determined  by  accident  or  by  a  fit  of  passion  * 

lb.  sc.  7.  JNTote  how  the  Kuig  first  awakens  Laertes's  vanity 
by  prating  the  reporter,  and  then  gratifies  it  by  the  report  itself 
a-  i  finally  points  it  by 


Sir,  this  report  of  his 
Bid  Hamlet  so  envenom  with  his  envy 


lb.  King's  speech  : 

For  goodness,  growing  to  a  pleurisy, 
Dies  in  his  own  too  much. 

Theobald's  note  from  Warburton,  who  conjectures  •  plethory.' 
I  rather  think  that  Shakspeare  meant  .pleurisy,'  but  involved 
Bit  the  thought  of  plethora,  as  supposing  pleurisy  to  arise  from 
too  much  blood  ;  otherwise  I  can  not  explain  the  following  line- 

And  then  this  should  is  like  a  spendthrift  sigh 
That  bin  ts  by  easing. 

I  a  stitch  in  the  side  every  one  must  have  heaved  a  sigh  that 
hurt  by  easing.  .  & 

Since  writing  the  above  I  feel  confirmed  that  'pleurisy'  is  the 
•ight  word;  for  I  find  that  in  the  old  medical  dictionaries  the 
ileunsy  is  often  called  the  '  plethory.' 


164  NOTES   ON   MACBETH. 

Hi. 

Queen.  Your  sister's  drown'd,  Laertes. 
Laer.  Drown'd  !  0,  where  ? 

That  Laertes  might  be  excused  in  some  degree  for  not  cooling", 
the  Act  concludes  with  the  affecting  death  of  Ophelia, — who  in 
the  beginning  lay  like  a  little  projection  of  land  into  a  lake  or 
stream,  covered  with  spray-flowers,  quietly  reflected  in  the  quiet 
waters,  but  at  length  is  undermined  or  loosened,  and  becomes  a 
fairy  isle,  and  after  a  brief  vagrancy  sinks  almost  without  an  eddy  ! 

Art  v.  sc.  1.  0,  the  rich  contrast  between  the  Clowns  and 
Hamlet,  as  two  extremes  !  You  see  in  the  former  the  mockery 
of  logic,  and  a  traditional  wit  valued,  like  truth,  for  its  antiquity, 
and  treasured  up,  like  a  tune,  for  use. 

lb.  sc.  1  and  2.  Shakspeare  seems  to  mean  all  Hamlet's  char- 
acter to  be  brought  together  before  his  final  disappearance  from 
the  scene ; — his  meditative  excess  in  the  grave-digging,  his  yield- 
ing to  passion  with  Laertes,  his  love  for  Ophelia  blazing  out,  his 
tendency  to  generalize  on  all  occasions  in  the  dialogue  with 
Horatio,  his  fine  gentlemanly  manners  with  Osrick,  and  his  and 
Shakspeare's  own  fondness  for  presentiment  : 

But  thou  would'st  not  think,  how  ill  all's  here  about  my  heart :  but  it  is 
no  matter. 

NOTES  ON  MACBETH. 

Macbeth  stands  in  contrast  throughout  with  Hamlet ;  in  the 
manner  of  opening  more  especially.  In  the  latter,  there  is  a 
gradual  ascent  from  the  simplest  forms  of  conversation  to  the 
language  of  impassioned  intellect, — yet  the  intellect  still  remain- 
ing the  seat  of  passion  :  in  the  former,  the  invocation  is  at  once 
made  to  the  imagination  and  the  emotions  connected  therewith. 
Hence  the  movement  throughout  is  the  most  rapid  of  all  Shak- 
speare's  plays  ;  and  hence  also,  with  the  exception  of  the  disgust- 
ing passage  of  the  Porter  (z)  (Act  ii.  sc.  3),  which  I  dare  pledge 
myself  to  demonstrate  to  be  an  interpolation  of  the  actors,  there 
is  not,  to  the  best  of  my  remembrance,  a  single  pun  or  play  on- 
words  in  the  whole  drama,  (aa)  I  have  previously  given  an  an- 
swer to  the  thousand  times  repeated  charge  against  Shakspeare 
upon  the  subject  of  his  punning,  and  I  here  merely  mention  the 


NOTES   ON   MACBETH.  165 

fact  of  the  absence  of  any  puns  in  Macbeth,  as  justifying  a  candid 
doubt  at  least,  whether  even  in  these  figures  of  speech  and  fanci- 
ful modifications  of  language,  Shakspeare  may  not  have  followed 
rules  and  principles  that  merit  and  would  stand  the  test  of  philo- 
sophic examination.  And  hence,  also,  there  is  an  entire  absence 
of  comedy,  nay.,  even  of  irony  and  philosophic  contemplation  in 
Macbeth,— the  play  being  wholly  and  purely  tragic.  For  the 
same  cause,  there  arc  no  reasonings  of  equivocal  morality,  which 
would  have  required  a  more  leisurely  state  and  a  consequently 
greater  activity  of  mind  ;— no  sophistry  of  self-delusion,— except 
only  that  previously  to  the  dreadful  act,  Macbeth  mistranslates  the 
recoilmgs  and  ominous  whispers  of  conscience  into  prudential  and 
selfish  reasonings,  and,  after  the  deed  done,  the  terrors  of  remorse 
into  fear  from  external  dangers,— like  delirious  men  who  run 
away  from  the  phantoms  of  their  own  brains,  or,  raised  by  terror 
to  rage,  stab  the  real  object  that  is  within  their  reach  :— whilst 
Lady  Macbeth  merely  endeavors  to  reconcile  his  and  her  own 
iinkmgs  of  heart  by  anticipations  of  the  worst,  and  an  affected 
bravado  in  confronting  them.  In  all  the  rest,  Macbeth's  language 
is  the  grave  utterance  of  the  very  heart,  conscience-sick,  even  to 
the  last  faintings  of  moral  death.  It  is  the  same  in  all  the  other 
characters.  The  variety  arises  from  rage,  caused  ever  and  anon 
by  disruption  of  anxious  thought,  and  the  quick  transition  of  fear 
into  it. 

In  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  the  scene  opens  with  superstition  ;  but 
in  each  it  is  not  merely  different,  but  opposite.  In  the  first  it  is 
connected  with  the  best  and  holiest  feelings  ;  in  the  second  with 
the  shadowy,  turbulent,  and  unsanctified  cravings  of  the  individ- 
ual will.  Nor  is  the  purpose  the  same  ;  in  the^one  the  object  is 
to  excite,  whilst  in  the  other  it  is  to  mark  a  mind  already  excited. 
Superstition,  of  one  sort  or  another,  is  natural  to  victorious  gen- 
erals ;  the  instances  are  too  notorious  to  need  mentioning.  There 
is  so  much  of  chance  in  warfare,  and  such  vast  events"  are  con- 
nected with  the  acts  of  a  single  individual,— the  representative, 
m  truth,  of  the  efforts  of  myriads,  and  yet  to  the  public,  and,' 
doubtless,  to  his  own  feelings,  the  aggregate  of  all,— that  the 
Iproper  temperament  for  generating  or  receiving  superstitious  im- 
pressions is  naturally  produced.  Hope,  the  master  element  of  a 
commanding  genius,  meeting  with  an  active  and  combining  in- 
tellect, and  an  imagination  of  just  that  degree  of  vividness  which 


166  NOTES   UN    MACBETH. 

disquiets  and  impels  the  soul  to  try  to  realize  its  images,  greatly 
increases  the  creative  power  of  the  mind  ;  and  hence  the  images 
become  a  satisfying  world  of  themselves,  as  is  the  case  in  every 
poet  and  original  philosopher  : — but  hope  fully  gratified,  and  yet 
the  elementary  basis  of  the  passion  remaining,  becomes  fear  ;  and, 
indeed,  the  general,  who  must  often  feel,  even  though  he  may 
hide  it  from  his  own  consciousness,  how  large  a  share  chance  had 
m  his  successes,  may  very  naturally  be  irresolute  in  a  new  scene, 
where  he  knows  that  all  will  depend  on  his  own  act  and  election. 
The  Weird  Sisters  are  as  true  a  creation  of  Shakspeare's,  as  his 
Ariel  and  Caliban, — fates,  furies,  and  materializing  witches  being 
the  elements.  They  are  wholly  different  from  any  representation 
of  witches  in  the  contemporary  writers,  and  yet  presented  a  suf- 
ficient external  resemblance  to  the  creatures  of  vulgar  prejudice 
to  act  immediately  on  the  audience.  Their  character  consists  in 
the  imaginative  disconnected  from  the  good  ;  they  are  the  shad- 
owy obscure  and  fearfully  anomalous  of  physical  nature,  the  law- 
less of  human  nature, — elemental  avengers  without  sex  or  kin 

Fair  is  foul,  and  foul  is  fair  ; 
Hover  thro'  the  fog  and  filthy  air. 

How  much  it  were  to  be  wished  in  playing  Macbeth,  that  an 
attempt  should  be  made  to  introduce  the  flexile  character-mask 
of  the  ancient  pantomime  ; — that  Flaxman  would  contribute  his 
genius  to  the  embodying  and  making  seifsuously  perceptible  that 
of  Shakspeare  ! 

The  style  and  rhythm  of  the  Captain's  speeches  in  the  second 
scene  should  be  illustrated  by  reference  to  the  interlude  in  Ham- 
let, in  which  the  epic  is  substituted  for  the  tragic,  in  order  to 
make  the  latter  be  felt  as  the  real-life  diction.  In  Macbeth,  the 
poet's  object  was  to  raise  the  mind  at  once  to  the  high  tragic 
tone,  that  the  audience  might  be  ready  for  the  precipitate  con- 
summation of  guilt  in  the  early  part  of  the  play.  The  true 
reason  for  the  first  appearance  of  the  Witches  is  to  strike  the  key- 
note of  the  character  of  the  whole  drama,  as  is  proved  by  their 
re-appearance  in  the  third  scene,  after  such  an  order  of  the 
king's  as  establishes  their  supernatural  power  of  information.  I 
say  information, — for  so  it  only  is  as  to  Glamis  and  Cawdor  ;  the 
'  king  hereafter'  was  still  contingent, — still  in  Macbeth's  moral  j 
vi ill  ;  although,  if  he  shcild  yield  to  the  temptation,  and  thus 


I 


NOTES   ON    MACBETH.  167 

forfeit  Ins  free  agency,  the  link  of  cause  and  effect  more  physico 
would  then  commence.  I  need  not  say,  that  the  general  idea 
is  all  that  can  be  required  from  the  poet,— not  a  scholastic  logical 
consistency  in  all  the  parts  so  as  to  meet  metaphysical  objectors. 
But  0  !  how  truly  Shaksperian  is  the  opening  of  Macbeth's  char- 
acter given  in  the  unpossessedness  of  Banquo's  mind,  wholly 
present  to  the  present  object,— an  unsullied,  unscarified  mirror  ! 
—And  how  strictly  true  to  nature  it  is,  that  Banquo,  and  not 
Macbeth  himself,  directs  our  notice  to  the  effect  produced  on 
Macbeth's  mind,  rendered  temptable  by  previous  dalliance  of  the 
fancy  with  ambitious  thoughts  : 

Good  Sir,  why  do  you  start ;  and  seem  to  fear 
Things  that  do  sound  so  fair  ? 

And  then,  again,  still  unintroitive,  addresses  the  Witches  :— 

I'  the  name  of  truth, 
Are  ye  fantastical,  or  that  indeed 
Which  outwardly  ye  show  ? 

Banquo's  questions  are  those  of  natural  curiosity,— such  as  a 
girl  would  put  after  hearing  a  gipsy  tell  her  school-fellow's  for- 
tune ;— all  perfectly  general,  or  rather  planless.  But  Macbeth, 
lost  in  thought,  raises  himself  to  speech  only  by  the  Witches  bein* 
about  to  depart  : — 

Stay,  you  imperfect  speakers,  tell  me  more  :— 

and  all  that  follows  is  reasoning  on  a  problem  already  discussed 
in  his  mind,— on  a  hope  which  he  welcomes,  and  the  doubts 
concerning  the  attainment  of  which  he  wishes  to  have  cleared 
up.  Compare  his  eagerness —the  keen  eye  with  which  he  few 
pursued  the  Witches'  evanishing — 

Speak,  I  charge  you  ! 

with  the  easily  satisfied  mind  of  the  self-uninterested  Banguo    _ 

The  air  hath  bubbles,  as  the  water  has, 

And  these  are  of  them  :— Whither  are' they  vanish'd  ? 

aad  then  Macbeth's  earnest  reply, 

Into  the  air ;  and  what  seem'd  corporal,  melted 
As  breath  into  the  wind  — '  Would  they  had  stayed! 


NOTES   ON   MACBETH. 
Is  it  too  minute  to  notice  the  appropriateness  of  the  simile  4 
hrpatli '  fee,  in  a  cold  climate  ? 

StiU  .gain  Ban^uo  goes  on  wondering,  like  any  eommen  spec 

tat°r  :  Were  such  things  here  as  we  do  speak  ahout  i 

whilst  Maoheth  persists  in  recurring  to  the  self-concerning  :- 

Your  children  shall  be  kings. 

Ban.     You  shall  be  kiag.  ......_,      , 

Mack  And  thane  of  Cawdor  too  :  went  it  not  so  ! 

So  surely  is  the  guilt  in  its  germ  anterior  to  the  supposed  cause, 
and immediate  temptation!  Before  he  can  coo^  the Ra- 
tion of  the  tempting  half  of  the  prophecy  arrives  and  the  con 
catenating  tendency  of  the  imagination  is  fostered  hy  the  sudden 

coincidence  : — 

Glamis  and  thane  of  Cawdor : 
The  greatest  is  behind. 

Oppose  this  to  Banquo's  simple  surprise  :— 

What,  can  the  devil  speak  true  I 
[b.     Banquo's  speech  : — 

That,  trusted  home, 

Might  yet  enkindle  you  unto  the  crown, 

Besides  the  thane  of  Cawdor. 

I  doubt  whether  '  enkindle'  has  not  another  ^  th^  *** J 
•  stimulating  ;'  I  mean  of  '  kind"  and  '  km,'  as  when  rabbits  a« 
said  to    kindle.'     However,  Macbeth  no  longer  hears  any  th.nf 

ah  extra : — 

Two  truths  are  told, 

As  happy  prologues  to  the  swelling  act 

Of  the  imperial  theme. 

Then  in  the  necessity  of  recollecting  himself— 

I  thank  you,  gentlemen. 
Then  he  relapses  into  himself  again,  and  every  word  of  his  soli* 
ly  shows  the  early  birth-date  of  his  gu.lt.     He  is  all-pow| 
wiLut  strength  ;  he  wishes  the  end  but  is  irresolute  ^  tot 
means  ;  conscience  distinctly  warns  him,  and  he  lulls  it  impj 
fectly  :— 


NOTES  ON  MACBETH 

169 

Lost  in  the  prospective  of  his  guilt,  he  turns  round  alarmed  lest 
others  may  suspect  what  is  passing  in  his  own  mind  "nd  in 
stantly  invents  the  lie  of  ambition  : 

My  dull  brain  was  wrought 
With  things  forgotten;— 

I    And  immediately  after  pours  forth  the  promising  courtesies  of  a 
usurper  in  intention :—  s  0I  d 

Kind  gentlemen,  your  pains 
Are  regiater'd  where  every  day  I  turn 
The  leaf  to  read  them. 

lb.     Macbeth's  speech  : 

Present/ear.s 
Are  less  than  horrible  imaginings. 

Warburton's  note,  and  substitution  of  '  feats'  for  '  fears  ' 

Mercy  on  this  most  wilful  ingenuity  of  blundering,  which  nev- 
Teit-Z8       I  ^  WarbUrt°n   °f  Wa^onlhis  mmolt 

lb.  sc.  4    0  !  the  affecting  beauty  of  the  death  of  Cawdor  and 
the  presentimental  speech  of  the  king  :— 

There's  no  art 

To  find  the  mind's  construction  in  the  face: 
He  was  a  gentleman  on  whom  I  built 
An  absolute  trust — 

Interrupted  by — 

0  worthiest  cousin  1 

way1'  TndT  f  ^  *"*"  trait°rf°r  Wll0m  G™*<*^  made 
MaebethW  ^•1\C°nfSt  ^  DunCan's  ' P^eous  joys,' 
Macbeth  has  nothing  but  the  eommon-places  of  loyalty,  in  which 

S then  '  T  ^^  k'ng'  MS  reaSOnin&  ™  his  a»  We, 
accessor,  suggests  a  new  enme.     This,  however,  seems  the  first 

SSfS as  4: the  plau  of  reaIizmg  his  wishes ;  -*£ 

herefore,  with  great  propnety,  Maebeth's  cowardioe  of  his  own 


170  NOTES  ON  MACBETH. 

conscience  discloses  itself.  I  always  think  there  is  something 
especially  Shaksperian  in  Duncan's  speeches  throughout  this 
scene,  such  pourings  forth,  such  abandonments,  compared  with 
the  language  of  vulgar  dramatists,  whose  characters  seem  to  have 
made  their  speeches  as  the  actors  learn  them, 
lb.  Duncan's  speech  : — 

Sons,  kinsmen,  thanes, 

And  you  whose  places  are  the  nearest,  know, 

We  will  establish  our  estate  upon 

Our  eldest  Malcolm,  whom  we  name  hereafter 

The  Prince  of  Cumberland :  which  honor  must 

Not  unaccompanied,  invest  him  only ; 

But  signs  of  nobleness,  like  stars,  shall  shine 

On  all  deservers. 

It  is  a  fancy  ;— but  I  can  never  read  this  and  the  following 
speeches  of  Macbeth,  without  involuntarily  thinking  of  the  Mil- 
tonic  Messiah  and  Satan. 

lb.  sc.  5.  Macbeth  is  described  by  Lady  Macbeth  so  as  at  the 
same  time  to  reveal  her  own  character.  Could  he  have  every 
thino-  he  wanted,  he  would  rather  have  it  innocently  ;— ignorant, 
as  alas  !  how  many  of  us  are,  that  he  who  wishes  a  temporal 
end  for  itself,  does  in  truth  will  the  means  ;  and  hence  the  dan- 
ger of  indulging  fancies.  Lady  Macbeth,  like  all  in  Shakspeare 
is  a  class  individualized:— of  high  rank,  left  much  alone,  and 
feedino-  herself  with  day-dreams  of  ambition,  she  mistakes  the  j 
courage  of  fantasy  for  the  power  of  bearing  the  consequences  of 
the  realities  of  guilt.  Hers  is  the  mock  fortitude  of  a  mind  de- 
luded by  ambition  ;  she  shames  her  husband  with  a  superhumai 
audacity  of  fancy  which  she  can  not  support,  but  sinks  in  th 
season  of  remorse,  and  dies  in  suicidal  agony.     Her  speech  -- 


Come,  all  you  spirits 
That  tend  on  mortal  thoughts,  unsex  me  here,  &c. 


a  to 
He 


is  that  of  one  who  had  habitually  familiarized  her  imagination 
dreadful  conceptions,  and  was  trying  to  do  so   still  more.     I 
invocations  and  requisitions  are  all  the  false  efforts  of  a  mind  ac 
customed  only  hitherto  to  the  shadows  of  the  imagination,  vvf 
enough  to  throw  the  every-day  substances  of  life  into  shadow,  b 
never  as  yet  brought  into  direct  contact  with  their  own  corre 
pondent  realities.     She  evinces  no  womanly  life,  no  wifely  jo; 


NOTES   ON   MACBETH.  17l 

at  the  return  of  her  husband,  no  pleased  terror  at  the  thought  of 
his  past  dangers,  whilst  Macbeth  bursts  forth  naturally— 

My  dearest  love — 

and  shrinks  from  the  boldness  with  which  she  presents  his  own 
thoughts  to  him.  With  consummate  art  she  at  first  uses  as  in- 
centives the  very  circumstances,  Duncan's  coming  to  their  house 
&c.  which  Macbeth's  conscience  would  most  probably  have  ad- 
duced to  her  as  motives  of  abhorrence  or  repulsion.  Yet  Mac- 
beth is  not  prepared  : 

We  will  speak  further. 

lb.  sc.  6.  The  lyrical  movement  with  which  this  scene  opens 
and  the  free  and  unengaged  mind  of  Banquo,  loving  nature,  and 
rewarded  in  the  love  itself,  form  a  highly  dramatic  contrast  with 
the  labored  rhythm  and  hypocritical  over-much  of  Lady  Mac- 
beth's welcome,  in  which  you  can  not  detect  a  ray  of  personal 
ieeiing,  but  all  is  thrown  upon  the  ■  dignities,'  the  general  duty 

lb.  sc.  7.  Macbeth's  speech  :— 


We  will  proceed  no  further  in  this  business : 
He  hath  honor'd  me  of  late;  and  I  have  bought 
Golden  opinions  from  all  sorts  of  people, 
Which  would  be  worn  now  in  their  newest  gloss, 
Not  cast  aside  so  soon. 


Note  the  inward  pangs  and  warnings  of  conscience  interpreted 
into  prudential  reasonings. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.  Banquo's  speech  : — 

A  heavy  summons  lies  like  lead  upon  me, 
And  yet  I  would  not  sleep.     Merciful  powers ! 
Restrain  in  me  the  cursed  thoughts,  that  nature 
Gives  way  to  in  repose. 

The  disturbance  of  an  innocent  soul  by  painful  suspicions  of 
mother's  guilty  intentions  and  wishes,  and  fear  of  the  cursed 
noughts  of  sensual  nature. 

>  lb.  sc.  2.  Now  that  the  deed  is  done  or  doing— now  that  the 
irst  reality  commences,  Lady  Macbeth  shrinks.  The  most  sim- 
)  e  sound  strikes  terror,  the  most  natural  consequences  are  horri- 
)le,  whilst  previously  every  thing,  however  awful,  appeared  a 
Qere  trifle  ;  conscience,  which  before  had  been  hidden  to  Mac- 


172  NOTES  ON  MACBETH. 

beth  in  selfish  and  prudential  fears,  now  rushes  in  upon  him  in 
her  own  veritable  person  : 

Methouglit  I  heard  a  voice  cry— Sleep  no  more  1 
I  could  not  say  Amen, 

When  they  did  say,  God  bless  us  1 
And  see  the  novelty  given  to  the  most  familiar  images  by  a  new 

^tb  l^f  This  low  soliloquy  of  the  Porter  and  his  few  speeches  1 
afterwards,  I  believe  to  have  been  written  for  the  mob  by  some 
other  hand,  perhaps  with  Shakspeare's  consent ;  and  that  finding 
it  take,  he  with  the  remaining  ink  of  a  pen  otherwise  employed, 
just  interpolated  the  words- 
Ill  devil-porter  it  no  further:  I  had  thought  tohavelet  in  some  of  all 
professions,  that  go  the  primrose  way  to  th  everlasting  bonfire. 

Of  the  rest  not  one  syllable  has  the  ever-present  being  of  Shak- 

SPAct'iii  sc.  1.  Compare  Macbeth's  mode  of  working  on  the 
murderers  in  this  place  with  Schiller's  mistaken  scene  between 
Butler,  Devereux,  and  Macdonald  in  Wallenstem  (Part  n.  act  iv 
sc  2)  The  comic  was  wholly  out  of  season.  Shakspeare  never 
introduces  it,  but  when  it  may  react  on  the  tragedy  by  harmo- 
nious  contrast. 

lb.  sc.  2.  Macbeth's  speech  : — 

But  let  the  frame  of  things  disjoint,  both  the  worlds  suffer,     . 
Ere  we  will  eat  our  meal  in  fear,  and  sleep 
In  the  affliction  of  these  terrible  dreams        % 
That  shake  us  nightly. 

Ever  and  ever  mistaking  the  anguish  of  ^^^^1 

selfishness,  and  thus  as  a  punishment  of  that  selfishness,  plungj 
ing  still  deeper  in  guilt  and  ruin, 
lb.  Macbeth's  speech  : — 

Be  innocent  of  the  knowledge,  dearest  chuck, 
Till  thou  applaud  the  deed. 
This  is  Macbeth's  sympathy  with  his  own  feelings,  and  hii 
mistaking  his  wife's  opposite  state. 
lb.  sc.  4. 

Macb.  It  irill  have  blood,  they  Bay ;  blood  will  have  blood: 


NOTES  ON. MACBETH.  173 

Stones  have  been  known  to  move,  and  trees  to  speak; 
Augurs  and  understood  relations,  have 
By  maggot-pies,  and  choughs,  and  rooks,  brought  forth 
The  secret'st  man  of  blood. 

The  deed  is  done:  but  Macbeth  receives  no  comfort,  no  addi- 
tional security.  He  has  by  guilt  torn  himself  live-asunder  from 
nature,  and  is,  therefore,  himself  in  a  preternatural  state  :  no 
wonder,  then,  that  he  is  inclined  to  superstition,  and  faith  in  the 
unknown  of  signs  and  tokens,  and  superhuman  agencies. 

Act  iv.  sc.  1. 

Len.    'Tis  two  or  three,  my  lord,  that  bring  you  word, 

Macduff  is  fled  to  England. 
Macb.  Fled  to  England  ? 

The  acme  of  the  avenging  conscience. 

lb.  sc.  2.  This  scene,  dreadful  as  it  is,  is  still  a  relief,  because 
a  variety,  because  domestic,  and  therefore  soothing,  as  associated 
with  the  only  real  pleasures  of  life.     The  conversation'  between 
Lady  Macdufi  and  her  child  heightens  the  pathos,  and  is  prepar- 
atory for  the  deep  tragedy  of  their  assassination.     Shakspeare's 
fondness  for  children  is  everywhere  shown  ;— in  Prince  Arthur, 
in  King  John  ;  in  the  sweet  scene  in  the  Winter's  Tale  between 
Hermione  and  her  son;  nay,  even  in  honest  Evans's  examina- 
tion of  Mrs.  Page's  school-boy.     To  the  objection  that  Shakspeare 
wounds  the  moral  sense  by  the  unsubdued,  undisguised  description 
of  the  most  hateful  atrocity— that  he  tears  the  feeling  without 
mercy,  and  even  outrages  the  eye  itself  with  scenes  oflnsupport- 
ible  horror— I,  omitting  Titus  Andronicus,  as  not  genuine,  and 
excepting  the  scene  of  Gloster's  blinding  in  Lear,  answer  boldly 
n  the  name  of  Shakspeare,  not  guilty.     (M) 
lb.  sc.  3.     Malcolm's  speech : 

Better  Macbeth, 
Than  such  a  one  to  reign. 

The  moral  is— the  dreadful  effects  even  on  the  best  minds  of 
ie  soul-sickening  sense  of  insecurity. 

lb.  How  admirably  Macduff's  grief  is  in  harmony  with  the 
'hole  play  !^  It  rends,  not  dissolves,  the  heart.  <  The  tune  of  it 
aes  manly.'     Thus  is  Shakspeare  always  master  of  himself  and 

his  subject,— a  genuine  Proteus :— we  see  all  things  in  him,  aa 


3L74  NOTES  ON  THE  .WINTER'S  TALE. 

images  in  a  calm  lake,  most  distinct,  most  accurate,— only  more 
splendid,  more  glorified.  This  is  correctness  in  the  only  philo- 
sophical sense.  But  he  requires  your  sympathy  and  your  sub- 
mission ;  you  must  have  that  recipiency  of  moral  impression 
without  which  the  purposes  and  ends  of  the  drama  would  he 
frustrated,  and  the  absence  of  which  demonstrates  an  utter  want 
of  all  imagination,  a  deadness  to  that  necessary  pleasure  of  being 
innocently°— shall  I  say,  deluded  ;— or  rather,  drawn  away  from 
ourselves  to  the  music  of  noblest  thought  in  harmonious  sounds. 
Happy  he,  who  not  only  in  the  public  theatre,  but  m  the  labors 
of  a  profession,  and  round  the  light  of  his  own  hearth,  still  car- 
ries  a  heart  so  pleasure- fraught ! 

Alas  for  Macbeth!  now  all  is  inward  with  him;  he  has  no 
more  prudential  prospective  reasonings.  His  wife,  the  only  being 
who  could  have  had  any  seat  in  his  affections,  dies  ;  he  puts  on 
despondency,  the  final  heart-armor  of  the  wretched,  and  would 
fain  think  every  thing  shadowy  and  unsubstantial,  as  indeed  all 
things  are  to  those  who  can  not  regard  them  as  symbols  of  good- 
ness : —  -.  '  ... 
Out,  out,  brief  candle  I 

Life's  but  a  walking  shadow ;  a  poor  player, 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  heard  no  more ;  it  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing. 

NOTES  ON  THE  WINTER'S  TALE. 

Although,  on  the  whole,  this  play  is  exquisitely  respondent 
to  its  title,  and  even  in  the  fault  I  am  about  to  mention,  still  a 
winter's  tale ;  yet  it  seems  a  mere  indolence  of  the  great  bard 
not  to  have  provided  in  the  oracular  response  (Act  ii.  sc.  2)  some 
ground  for  Hermione's  seeming  death  and  fifteen  years'  voluntary 
concealment.  This  might  have  been  easily  effected  by  some  ob- 
scure sentence  of  the  oracle,  as  for  example  :— 

'  Nor  shall  he  ever  recover  an  heir,  if  he  have  a  wife  before  that  recovery.' 

The  idea  of  this  delightful  drama  is  a  genuine  jealousy  of  dis- 
position, and  it  should  be  immediately  followed  by  the  perusal  of 
Othello,  which  is  the  direct  contrast  of  it  in  every  particular.    Fox 


JNrOTES  ON  THE  WINTER'S  TALE.  175 

jealousy  is-  a  vice  of  the  mind,  a  culpable  tendency  of  the  tem- 
per, having  certain  well-known  and  well-defined  effects  and  con- 
comitants, all  of  which  are  visible  in  Leontes,  and,  I  boldly  say, 
not  one  of  which  marks  its  presence  in  Othello  ;— such  as,  first, 
an  excitability  by  the  most  inadequate  causes,  and  an  eagerness 
to  snatch  at  proofs ;  secondly,  a  grossness  of  conception,  and  a 
disposition  to  degrade  the  object  of  the  passion  by  sensual  fancies 
and  images,  thirdly,  a  sense  of  shame  of  his  own  feelings  exhib- 
ited in  a  solitary  moodiness  of  humor,  and  yet  from  the  violence 
of  the  passion  forced  to  utter  itself,  and  therefore  catching  occa- 
sions to  ease  the  mind  by  ambiguities,  equivoques,  by  talking  to 
those  who  can  not,  and  who  are  known  not  to  be  able  to,  under- 
stand what  is  said  to  them,— in  short,  by  soliloquy  in  the  form 
of  dialogue,  and  hence  a  confused,  broken,  and  fragmentary  man- 
ner ;  fourthly,  a  dread  of  vulgar  ridicule,  as  distinct  from  a  high 
sense  of  honor,  or  a  mistaken  sense  of  duty ;  and  lastly,  and  im- 
mediately, consequent  on  this,  a  spirit  of  selfish  vindictiveness. 

Act  i.  sc.  1-2. 

Observe  the  easy  style  of  chitchat  between  Carnillo  and  Arch 
idamus  as  contrasted  with  the  elevated  diction  on  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  kings  and  Hermione  in  the  second  scene  :  and  how 
admirably  Polixenes'  obstinate  refusal  to  Leontes  to  stay 

There  is  no  tongue  that  moves  ;  none,  none  i'  the  world 
So  soon  as  yours,  could  win  me  ; — 

prepares  for  the  effect  produced  by  his  afterwards  yielding  to  Her 
mione  ;— which  is,  nevertheless,  perfectly  natural  from  mere  cour- 
tesy  of  sex,  and  the  exhaustion  of  the  will  by  former  efforts  of 
denial,  and  well  calculated  to  set  in  nascent  action  the  jealousy 
of  Leontes.  This,  when  once  excited,  is  unconsciously  increased 
by  Hermione : — 

Yet,  good  deed,  Leontes, 

I  love  thee  not  a  jar  o'  the  clock  behind 

What  lady  she  her  lord ; — 

accompanied,  as  a  good  actress  ought  to  represent  it,  by  an  ex- 
pression and  recoil  of  apprehension  that  she  had  gone  too  far. 

At  my  request,  he  would  not : — 

Hie  first  working  of  the  jealous  fit ; — 

Too  hot.  too  hot : — 


176  NOTES  ON  THE   WINTER'S  TALE. 

The  morbid  tendency  of  Leontes  to  lay  hold  of  the  merest  tn 
fles,  and  his  grossness  immediately  afterwards — 

Paddling  palms  and  pinching  fingers ; — 

followed  by  his  strange  loss  of  self-control  in  his  dialogue  with  the 
.little  hoy. 

Act  iii.  sc.  2.     Paulina's  speech  . 

That  thou  betray'dst  Polixenes,  'twas  nothing; 
That  did  but  show  thee,  of  a  fool,  inconstant, 
And  damnable  ingrateful. — 

Theobald  reads  '  soul.' 

I  think  the  original  word  is  Shakspeare's.  1.  My  ear  feels  it 
to  be  Shaksperian ;  2.  The  involved  grammar  is  Shaksperian ; 
— ■  show  thee,  being  a  fool  naturally,  to  have  improved  thy  folly 
by  inconstancy ;'  3.  The  alteration  is  most  flat,  and  un-Shaks- 
perian.  As  to  the  grossness  of  the  abuse — she  calls  him  '  gross 
and  foolish'  a  few  lines  below. 

Act  iv.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Autolycus : — 

For  the  life  to  come,  I  sleep  out  the  thought  of  it. 

Fine  as  this  is,  and  delicately  characteristic  of  one  who  had 
lived  and  been  reared  in  the  best  society,  and  had  been  precipi- 
tated from  it  by  dice  and  drabbing  ;  yet  still  it  strikes  against  my 
feelings  as  a  note  out  of  tune,  and  as  not  coalescing  with  that 
pastoral  tint  which  gives  such  a  charm  to  this  act.  It  is  too 
Macbeth-like  in  the  '  snapper-up  of  unconsidered  trifles.' 

lb.  sc.  3.     Perdita's  speech  : — 

From  Dis's  wagon !  daffodils. 

An  epithet  is  wanted  here,  not  merely  or  chiefly  for  the  metre, 

but  for  the  balance,  for  the  aesthetic  logic.     Perhaps,  '  golden' 

was  the  word  which  would  set  off  the  '  violets  dim.' 

lb. 

Pale  primroses 
That  die  unmarried. — 
Milton's— 

And  the  rathe  primrose  that  forsaken  dies. 

lb.     Perdita's  speech  : — 

Even  here  undone : 

I  was  not  inuc]/  afraid ;  for  once  or  twice 


NOTES  ON  OTHELLO.  177 

I  was  about  to  speak,  and  tell  him  plainly, 
The  selfsame  sun,  that  shines  upon  his  court, 
Hides  not  his  visage  from  our  cottage,  but 
Looks  on  alike.     Wilt  please  you,  Sir,  be  gone ! 

{To  Florizel) 
I  told  you,  what  would  come  of  this.     Beseech  you, 
Of  your  own  state  take  care :  this  dream  of  mine, 
Being  awake,  I'll  queen  it  no  inch  farther, 
But  milk  my  ewes,  and  weep. 

0  how  more  than  exquisite  is  this  whole  speech  ! — And  that 
profound  nature  of  noble  pride  and  grief  venting  themselves  in  a 
momentary  peevishness  of  resentment  toward  Florizel : — 

Wilt  please  you,  Sir,  be  gone  ! 

lb.     Speech  of  Autolycus  : — 

Let  me  have  no  lying ;  it  becomes  none  but  tradesmen,  and  they  often 
give  us  soldiers  the  lie ;  but  we  pay  them  for  it  in  stamped  coin,  not  stab- 
bing steel ; — therefore  they  do  not  give  us  the  lie. 

As  we  ]oay  them,  they,  therefore,  do  not  give  it  us. 


NOTES   ON  OTHELLO. 

Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Admirable  is  the  preparation,  so  truly  and  peculiarly  Shak- 
sperian,  in  the  introduction  of  Hoderigo,  as  the  dupe  on  whom 
Iago  shall  first  exercise  his  art,  and  in  so  doing  display  his  own 
character.  Roderigo,  without  any  fixed  principle,  but  not  with- 
out the  moral  notions  and  sympathies  with  honor,  which  his 
rank  and  connections  had  hung  upon  him,  is  already  well  fitted 
and  predisposed  for  the  purpose  ;  for  very  want  of  character  and 
strength  of  passion,  like  wind  loudest  in  an  empty  house,  consti- 
tute his  character.  The  first  three  lines  happily  state  the  nature 
and  foundation  of  the  friendship  between  him  and  Iago, — the  purse, 
— as  also  the  contrast  of  Hoderigo's  intemperance  of  mind  with 
Iago's  coolness, — the  coolness  of  a  preconceiving  experimenter. 
The  mere  language  of  protestation — 

If  ever  I  did  dream  of  such  a  matter,  abhor  me, — ■ 

which  falling  in  with  the  associative  link,  determines  Hoderigo's 
continuation  of  complaint — 

H* 


178  NOTES  ON  OTHELLO. 

Thou  told'st  me,  thou  didst  hold  him  in  thy  hate — 

elicits  at  length  a  true  feeling  of  Iago's  mind,  the  dread  of  con- 
tempt habitual  to  those,  who  encourage  in  themselves,  and  have 
their  keenest  pleasure  in,  the  expression  of  contempt  for  others. 
Observe  Iago's  high,  self-opinion,  and  the  moral,  that  a  wicked 
man  will  employ  real  feelings,  as  well  as  assume  those  most  alien 
from  his  own,  as  instruments  of  his  purposes  : — 

And,  by  the  faith  of  man, 

I  know  my  place,  I  am  worth  no  worse  a  place. 

I  think  Tyrwhitt's  reading  of  '  life'  for  '  wife' — 
A  fellow  almost  damn'd  in  a  fair  wife — 

the  true  one,  as  fitting  to  Iago's  contempt  for  whatever  did  not 
display  power,  and  that  intellectual  power.  In  what  follows,  let 
the  reader  feel  how  by  and  through  the  glass  of  two  passions, 
disappointed  vanity  and  envy,  the  very  vices  of  which  he  is  com- 
plaining, are  made  to  act  upon  him  as  if  they  were  so  many 
excellences,  and  the  more  appropriately,  because  cunning  is  al- 
ways admired  and  wished  for  by  minds  conscious  of  inward 
weakness  ; — but  they  act  only  by  half,  like  music  on  an  inatten- 
tive auditor,  swelling  the  thoughts  which  prevent  him  from  lis- 
tening to  it. 
lb. 

Rod.  "What  a  full  fortune  does  the  thick-lips  owe, 
If  he  can  carry 't  thus. 

Hoderigo  turns  off  to  Othello  ;  and  here  comes  one,  if  not  the 
only,  seeming  justification  of  our  blackamoor  or  negro  Othello. 
Even  if  we  supposed  this  an  uninterrupted  tradition  of  the  theatre, 
and  that  Shakspeare  himself,  from  want  of  scenes,  and  the  ex- 
perience that  nothing  could  be  made  too  marked  for  the  senses  of 
his  audience,  had  practically  sanctioned  it, — would  this  prove 
aught  concerning  his  own  intention  as  a  poet  for  all  ages  ?  Can 
we  imagine  him  so  utterly  ignorant  as  to  make  a  barbarous  negro 
plead  royal  birth, — at  a  time,  too,  when  negroes  were  not  known 
except  as  slaves  ? — As  for  Iago's  language  to  Brabantio,  it  im- 
plies merely  that  Othello  was  a  Moor,  that  is,  black.  Though 
I  think  the  rivalry  of  Hoderigo  sufficient  to  account  for  his  wil- 
ful confusion  of  Moor  and  Negro, — yet,  even  if  compelled  to  give 
this  up,  I  should  think  it  only  adapted  for  the  acting  of  the  day, 


NOTES  ON  OTHELLO.  I79 

and  should  complain  of  an  enormity  built  on  a  single  word,  in 
direct  contradiction  to  Iago's  '  Barbary  horse.'  Besides,  if  we 
could  in  good  earnest  believe  Shakspeare  ignorant  of  the  distinc- 
tion, still  why  should  we  adopt  one  disagreeable  possibility  in- 
stead of  a  ten  times  greater  and  more  pleasing  probability  ?  It  is 
a  common  error  to  mistake  the  epithets  applied  by  the  dramatis 
personce  to  each  other,  as  truly  descriptive  of  what  the  audience 
ought  to  see  or  know.  No*  doubt  Desdemona  saw  Othello's  vis- 
age in  his  mind  ;  yet,  as  we  are  constituted,  and  most  surely  as 
an  English  audience  was  disposed  in  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  it  would  be  something  monstrous  to  conceive  this 
beautiful  Venetian  girl  falling  in  love  with  a  veritable  negro.  It 
would  argue  a  disproportionateness,  a  want  of  balance,  in  Desde- 
mona, which  Shakspeare  does  not  appear  to  have  in  the  least 
contemplated. 

lb.     Brabantio's  speech  : — 

This  accident  is  not  unlike  my  dream : — 

The  old  careful  senator,  being  caught   careless,  transfers  his 
caution  to  his  dreaming  power  at  least. 
lb.     Iago's  speech  : — 

— For  their  souls, 
Another  of  his  fathom  they  have  not, 
To  lead  their  business  : — 

The  forced  praise  of  Othello  followed  by  the  bitter  hatred  of 
lim  in  this  speech  !  And  observe  how  Brabantio's  dream  pre- 
pares for  his  recurrence  to  the  notion  of  philters,  and  how  both 
)repare  for  carrying  on  the  plot  of  the  arraignment  of  Othello  on 
his  ground. 

lb.  sc.  2. 

Oth.  'Tis  better  as  it  is. 

I  How  well  these  few  words  impress  at  the  outset  the  truth  of 
theilo's  own  character  of  himself  at  the  end — <  that  he  was  not 
ksily  wrought  !' '   His  self-go vernmeiYt  contra-distinguishes  him 
fcroughout  from  Leontes. 
lb.     Othello's  speech : — 

— And  my  demerits 
May  speak,  unbonnetted — 

The   argument  in  Theobald's  note,  where  '  and  bonnetted'  is 


180  NOTES  ON  OTHELLO. 

suggested,  goes  on  the  assumption  that  Shakspeare  could  not  use 
the  same  word  differently  in  different  places  ;  whereas  I  should 
conclude,  that  as  in  the  passage  in  Lear  the  word  is  employed  in 
its  direct  meaning,  so  here  it  is  used  metaphorically ;  and  this  is 
confirmed  by  what  has  escaped  the  editors,  that  it  is  not  '  I,'  but 
1  my  demerits'  that  may  speak  unbonnetted, — without  the  sym- 
bol of  a  petitioning  inferior. 
lb.     Othello's  speech  : — 

Please  your  grace,  my  ancient ; 
A  man  he  is  of  honesty  and  trust : 
To  his  conveyance  I  assign  my  wife. 

Compare  this  with  the  behavior  of  Leontes  to  his  true  friend 
Camillo. 
lb.  sc.  3. 

Bra.  Look  to  her,  Moor  ;  have  a  quick  eye  to  see : 
She  h-s  rieceiv'd  her  father,  and  may  thee. 
Oth.  My  life  uppn  her  faith. 

In  real  life,  how  do  we  look  back  to  little  speeches  as  presenti- 
mental  of,  or   contrasted  with,  an   affecting   event  !     Even  so 
Shakspeare,  as  secure  of  being  read  over  and  over,  of  becoming 
family-friend,  provides  this  passage  for  his  readers,  and  leaves  it 
to  them. 

lb.     Iago's  speech  : — 

Virtue  ?  a  fig  1  'tis  in  ourselves,  that  we  are  thus,  or  thus,  <fcc. 

This  speech  comprises  the  passionless  character  of  Iago.  It  is 
all  will  in  intellect ;  and  therefore  he  is  here  a  bold  partisan  of  a 
truth,  but  yet  of  a  truth  converted  into  a  falsehood  by  the  ab- 
sence of  all  the  necessary  modifications  caused  by  the  frail  nature! 
of  man.     And  then  comes  the  last  sentiment : — 

Our  raging  motions,  our  carnal  stings,  our  unbitted  lusts,  whereof  I  takd 
this,  that  you  call — love,  to  be  a  sect  or  scion  ! 

Here  is  the  true  Iagoism  of,  alas  !  how  many  !  Note  Iago's 
pride  of  mastery  in  the  repetition  of  '  Go,  make  money  !'  to  hi! 
anticipated  dupe,  even  stronger  than  his  love  of  lucre  :  and  when 
Roderigo  is  completely  won — 

I  am  chang'd.    I'll  go  sell  all  my  land — 


NOTES   ON  OTHELLO.  jgl 

when   the   effect   has   been    fully  produced,  the    repetition   of 
triumph — 

Go  to  ;  farewell ;  put  money  enough  iu  your  purse  ! 

The  remainder — Iago's  soliloquy — the  motive-hunting  of  a  mo. 
tiveless  malignity— how  awful  it  is  !     Yea,  whilst  he  is  still  al-  ( 
lowed  to  bear  th-3  divine  image,  it  is  too  fiendish  for  his  own  \ 
steady  view, — for  the  lonely  gaze  of  a  being  next  to  devil,  and 
only  not  quite  devil,— and  yet  a  character  which  Shakspeare  has 
attempted  and  executed,  without  disgust  and  without  scandal  ! 

Dr.  Johnson  has  remarked  that  little  or  nothing  is  wanting  to 
render  the  Othello  a  regular  tragedy,  but  to  have  opened  the  play 
with  the  arrival  of  Othello  in  Cyprus,  and  to  have  thrown  the 
preceding  act  into  the  form  of  narration.     Here,  then,  is  the  place 
to  determine,  whether  such  a  change  would   or  would  riot  be 
an  improvement; — nay  (to  throw  down  the  glove  with  a  full 
challenge),  whether  the  tragedy  would  or  not  by  such  an  ar- 
rangement become  more  regular, — that  is,  more  consonant  with 
the  rules  dictated  by  universal  reason,  on  the  true  common-sense 
of  mankind,  in  its  application  to  the  particular  case.     For  in  all 
acts  of  judgment,  it  can  never   be   too    often   recollected,  and 
scarcely  too  often  repeated,  that  rules  are  means  to  ends,  and, 
consequently,  that  the  end  must  be  determined  and  understood 
before  it  can  be  known  what  the  rules  are  or  ought  to  be.    Now, 
from  a  certain  species  of  drama,  proposing  to  itself  the   accom- 
plishment of  certain  ends, — these  partly  arising  from  the  idea  of 
the  species  itself,  but  in  part,  likewise,  forced  upon  the  dramatist 
by  accidental  circumstances  beyond  his  power  to  remove  or  con- 
trol,— three   rules  have   been   abstracted; — in  other  words,  the 
means  most  conducive  to  the  attainment  of  the  proposed  ends 
have  been  generalized,  and  prescribed  under  the  names  of  the 
three  unities, — the  unity  of  time,  the  unity  of  place,  and  the 
unity  of  action, — which  last  would,  perhaps,  have  been  as  appro- 
priately, as  well  as  more  intelligibly,  entitled  the  unity  of  interest. 
Vi ith  this  last  the  present  question  has  no  immediate  concern- 
in  fact,  its  conjunction  with  the  former  two  is  a  mere  delusion  of 
words.     It  is  not  properly  a  rule,  but  in  itself  the  great  end  not 
only  of  the  drama,  but  of  the  epic  poem,  the  lyric  ode,  of  all  poe- 
try, down  to  the  candle-flame  cone  of  an  epigram,— nay  of  poesy 
in  general,  as  the  proper  generic  term  inclusive  of  all  the  fine  arts 


182  NOTES  ON  OTHELLO. 

as  its  species.     But  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place,  which  alone  are 
entitled  to  the  name  of  rules,  the  history  of  their  origin  will  be  their 
best  criterion.      You  might  take  the  G-reek  chorus  to  a  place,  but 
you  could  not  bring  a  place  to  them  without  as  palpable  an  equi- 
voque as  bringing  Birnam  wood  to  Macbeth  at  Dunsinane.     It 
was  the  same,°though  in  a  less  degree,  with  regard  to  the  unity 
of  time :— the  positive  fact,  not  for  a  moment  removed  from  the 
senses,  the  presence,  I  mean,  of  the  same  identical  chorus,  was  a 
continued  measure  of  time  ;— and  although  the  imagination  may 
supersede  perception,  yet  it  must  be  granted  to  be  an  imperfection 
—however  easily  tolerated— to  place  the  two  in  broad  contradic- 
tion to  each  other.     In  truth,  it  is  a  mere  accident  of  terms  ;  for 
the  Trilogy  of  the  Greek  theatre  was  a  drama  in  three  acts,  and 
notwithstanding  this,  what  strange  contrivances  as  to  place  there 
are  in  the  Aristophanic  Frogs.    Besides,  if  the  law  of  mere  actual 
perception  is  once  violated— as  it  repeatedly  is  even  in  the  G-reek 
tragedies— why  is  it  more  difficult  to  imagine  three  hours  to  be 
three  years  than  to  be  a  whole  day  and  night  ? 
Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

Observe  in  how  many  ways  Othello  is  made,  first,  our  acquaint- 
ance, then  our  friend,  then  the  object  of  our  anxiety,  before  the 
deeper  interest  is  to  be  approached  ! 

lb. 

Mont.  But,  good  lieutenant,  is  your  general  wiv'd? 
Cas.  Most  fortunately  :  he  hath  achiev'd  a  maid 
That  paragons  description,  aod  wild  fame; 
One  that  excels  the  quirks  of  blazoning  pens, 
And,  in  the  essential  vesture  of  creation, 
Does  bear  all  excellency. 

Here  is  Cassio's  warm-hearted,  yet  perfectly  disengaged,  praise 
of  Desdemona,  and  sympathy  with  the  « most  fortunately'  wived 
Othello ;— and  yet  Cassio  is  an  enthusiastic  admirer,  almost  a 
worshipper,  of  Desdemona.  0,  that  detestable  code  that  excel- 
lence can  not  be  loved  in  any  form  that  is  female,  but  it  must 
needs  be  selfish  !  Observe  Othello's  '  honest,'  and  Oassio's  ' bold' 
Iago,  and  Cassio's  full  guileless-hearted  wishes  for  the  safety  and 
love-raptures  of  Othello  and  'the  divine  Desdemona.'  And  also 
note  the  exquisite  circumstance  of  Cassio's  kissing  Iago's  wife, 
as  if  it  ought  to  be  impossible  that  the  dullest  auditor  should  not 
feel  Cassio's  religious  love  of  Desdemona's  purity.     Iago's  answers 


NOTES  ON  OTHELLO.  183 

*r%2£J%?^^  women 

and  expresses  to  a  wife.     Surely  it  ought  to  be  considered  a  very 
exalted  compliment  to  women,  that  all  the  sarcasms  on  them  in 
fcnakspeare  are  put  in  the  mouths  of  villains. 
lb. 

Des.  I  am  not  merry ;  but  I  do  beguile,  &e. 

^struggle  of  courtesy  in  Desdemona  to  abstract  her  attention. 

asSe  aatfb\f^-takeuhTr  *  *"  ^  A*  WeU  ™d>  **-W  with 
upoa  t:  J?£  thlS'  WlU  *  GnSnare  as  ^  ■  %  -  Cassio.    V  smile 

of  2eoZ7re  given  t0  trifleSj  and  made  fertile  b^ the  vil  w 

lb.     Iago's  dialogue  with  Roderigo  : 

OtheUo  ^  tUe  r6hearSal  °n  the  dUPe  °f  the  traiWs  intent!o^  »« 
lb.     Iago's  soliloquy : — 

But  partly  led  to  diet  my  revenge, 
For  that  I  do  suspect  the  lusty  Moor 
Hath  leap'd  into  my  seat. 

This  thought,  originally  by  Iago's  own  confession  a  mere 
suspicion,  is  now  ripening,  and  gnaws  his  base  nature  as  his 
own  'poisonous  mineral'  is  about  to  gnaw  the  noble  heart  of  his 
general. 

lb.  sc.  3.     Othello's  speech : 

I  know,  Iago, 

Thy  honesty  and  love  doth  mince  this  matter, 

Making  it  light  to  Cassio. 

fcis !  Ay' and  who  but  the  reader  °f  *•  ^  -" 

lb.     Iago's  soliloquy  : — 

-And  what>s  he  theQ  that  sayg_r  pl^  the  viiia.a  ? 
When  this  advice  is  free  I  give,  and  honest, 
Probable  to  thinking,  and,  indeed,  the  course 
To  win  the  Moor  again. 

He  is  not  you  see,  an  absolute  fiend  ;  or,  at  least,  he  wishes  to 
unk  himself  not  so. 


I84  NOTES   ON  OTHELLO. 

Act  iii.  sc.  3. 

Des.  Before  ^Emilia  here, 
1  give  the  warrant  of  this  place. 

The  over-zeal  of  innocence  in  Desdemona. 

Enter  Desdemona  and  JEmilia. 
Oth.  If  she  be  false,  0,  then,  heaven  mocks  itself  ! 
I'll  not  believe  it. 

Divine  !     The  effect  of  innocence  and  the  better  genius  ! 

Act  v.  sc.  3. 

Mmil,  Why,  the  wrong  is  but  a  wrong  i'  the  world;  and  having  the 
world  for  your  labor,  'tis  a  wrong  in  your  own  world,  and  you  nnght  quickly 
make  it  right. 

Warburton' s  note.  .  _ 

What  any  other  man,  who  had  learning  enough,  might  have 
quoted  as  a  playful  and  witty  illustration  of  his  remarks  against 
the  Calvinistic  thesis,  Warburton  gravely  attributes  to  Shakspeare 
as  intentional ;  and  this,  too,  in  the  mouth  of  a  lady's  woman  , 
Act  v.  last  scene.     Othello's  speech  :— 

Of  one,  whose  hand, 

Like  the  base  Indian,  threw  a  pearl  away 
Richer  than  all  his  tribe,  <fcc. 

Theobald's  note  from  Warburton. 

Thus  it  is  for  no-poets  to  comment  on  the  greatest  of  .poets 
To  make  Othello  say  that  he,  who  had  killed  his  wife,  was  lik 
Herod  who  killed  Mariamne  !— 0,  how  many  beauties,  in  thi 
one  line,  were  impenetrable  to  the  ever  thought-swarming,  bu 
idealess,  Warburton  !     Othello  wishes  to  excuse  himself  on  the 
score  of  ignorance,  and  yet  not  to  excuse  himself— to  excuse  him- 
self by  accusing.     This  struggle  of  feeling  is  finely  conveyed  in 
the  word  ■  base,'  which  is  applied  to  the  rude  Indian,  not  in  his 
own  character,  but  as  the  momentary  representative  of  Othello  s 
'  Indian'— for  I  retain  the  old  reading— means  American,  a  sav  j 

ao-e  in  genere. 

"Finally  let  me  repeat  that  Othello  does  not  kill  Desdemona  in 

jealousy,  but  in  a  conviction  forced  upon  him  by  the  almost 

superhuman  art  of  Iago,  such  a  conviction  as  any  man  would  and 

'^st^^nle^IHed  who  had  believed  Iago's  honesty  as  Othello 


NOTES  ON'  BEN  JONSON.  185 

-lid.     We,  theaudjencejmow  that  Iago  is  a  villain  from  the  be. 
ginning;    lnfTirTsaniaeffi*  the   essence   of   the~  Shaksperian 
Othello  we  must  perseveringly  place  ourselves  in  his  situation 
and  under  h,s  circumstances.     Then  we  shall  immediately  fee 
the  fundamental  difference  between  the  solemn  agony  of  the 
noble  Moor,  and  the  wretched  fishing  jealousies  of  Leontes,  and 
the  morbid  suspiciousness  of  Leonatus,  who  is,  in  other  respects 
a  fine  character.     Othello  had  no  life  but  in  Desdemona  :_the 
belief  that  she,  his  angel,  had  fallen  from  the  heaven  of  her 
native  innocence,  wrought  a  civil  war  in  his  heart.     She  is  his 
counterpart ;  and,  like  him,  is  almost  sanctified  in  our  eyes  bV  her 
absolute  unsuspiciousness,  and  holy  entireness  of  love      As  the 
curtain  drops,  which  do  we  pity  the  most  ? 

Extremum  hunc .     There  are  three  powers  :_Wit, 

which  discovers  partial  likeness  hidden   in   general    diversity 
subtlety,  which  discovers  the  diversity  concealed  in  general  ap- 
parent sameness  ;_and  profundity,  which  discovers  an  essential 
unity  under  all  (he  semblances  of  difference 

Give  to  a  subtle  man  fancy,  and  he  is  a  wit  ;  to  a  deep  man 
imagination,  and  he  is  a  philosopher.     Add,  again,  pleasurable 
sensibdity  m  the  threefold  form  of  sympathy  with  ^interesting 
in  morals,  the  impressive  in  form,  and  the  harmonious  in  sound 
—and  you  have  the  poet. 

_  But  combine  all,_wit,  subtlety,  and  fancy,  with  profundity 
imagination,  and  moral  and  physical  susceptibility  of  the 
pleasurable,_and  let  the  object  of  action  be  man  universal; 

si™! w-0,  rash prophecy !  -»  *  - h— 

NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

J»b7w    nl  Tfng  *°  C°1JeCt  °ut  of  om  dramatists  fr°"> 
bzabeth  to  Charles  I.  proofs  of  the  maimers  of  the  times.     One 

tnkmg  symptom  of  general  coarseness  of  manners,  which  maV 

o-exist  with  great  refinement  of  morals,  as,  alas  !  vice  versa,  is 

)  be  seen  in  the  very  frequent  allusions  to  the  olfactories  with 

ieir  most  disgusting  stimulants,  and  these,  too,  in  the  conversa- 

1  "I  IT"""  ladi6S-     ™S  W0U,d  not  aPPear  s°  st™nge  to  one 
ho  had  been  on  terms  of  familiarity  with  Sicilian  and  Italian 


186  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

women  of  rank  :  and  bad  as  they  may,  too  many  of  them,  actu« 
ally  be,  yet  I  doubt  not  that  the  extreme  grossness  of  their  lan- 
guage has  impressed  many  an  Englishman  of  the  present  era 
with  far  darker  notions  than  the  same  language  would  have  pro- 
duced in  the  mind  of  one  of  Elizabeth's  or  James's  courtiers. 
Those  who  have  read  Shakspeare  only,  complain  of  occasional 
grossness  in  his  plays  ;  but  compare  him  with  his  contemporaries, 
and  the  inevitable  conviction,  is  that  of  the  exquisite  purity  of  his 
imagination. 

The  observation  I  have  prefixed  to  the  Volpone  is  the  key  to 
the  faint  interest  which  these  noble  efforts  of  intellectual  power 
excite,  with  the  exception  of  the  fragment  of  the  Sad  Shepherd  ; 
because  in  that  piece  only  is  there  any  character  with  whom  you 
can  morally  sympathize.  On  the  other  hand,  Measure  for  Meas- 
ure is  the  only  play  of  Shakspeare' s  in  which  there  are  not  some 
one  or  more  characters,  generally  many,  whom  you  follow  with 
affectionate  feeling.  For  I  confess  that  Isabella,  of  all  Shak- 
speare's  female  characters,  pleases  me  the  least  ;  and  Measure 
for  Measure  is,  indeed  the  only  one  of  his  genuine  works,  which 
is  painful  to  me. 

Let  me  not  conclude  this  remark,  however,  without  a  thankful 
acknowledgment  to  the  manes  of  Ben  Jonson,  that  the  more  I 
study  his  writings,  I  the  more  admire  them  ;  and  the  more  my 
study  of  him  resembles  that  of  an  ancient  classic,  in  the  minutic?. 
of  his  rhythm,  metre,  choice  of  words,  forms  of  connection,  and  so 
forth,  the  more  numerous  have  the  points  of  my  admiration  be- 
come. I  may  add,  too,  that  both  the  study  and  the  admiration 
can  not  but  be  disinterested,  for  to  expect  therefrom  any  advan- 
tage to  the  present  drama  would  be  ignorance.  The  latter  is 
utterly  heterogeneous  from  the  drama  of  the  Shaksperian  age, 
with  a  diverse  object  and  contrary  principle.  The  one  was  to 
present  a  model  by  imitation  of  real  life,  taking  from  real  life  all 
that  in  it  which  it  ought  to  be,  and  supplying  the  rest ; — the  other 
is  to  copy  what  is,  and  as  it  is, — at  best  a  tolerable,  but  most 
frequently  a  blundering,  copy.  In  the  former  the  difference  was 
an  essential  element ;  in  the  latter  an  involuntary  defect.  We 
should  think  it  strange,  if  a  tale  in  dance  were  announced,  and 
the  actors  did  not  dance  at  all ; — and  yet  such  is  modern  comedy 


NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  187 


WHALLEY'S  PREFACE. 


But  JohutDn  was  soon  sensible,  how  inconsistent  this  medley  of  names 
and  manners  was  in  reason  and  nature;  and  with  how  little  propriety  it 
could  ever  have  a  place  in  a  legitimate  and  just  picture  of  real  life. 

But  did  Johnson  reflect  that  the  very  essence  of  a  play,  the 
very  language  in  which  it  is  written,  is  a  fiction  to  which  all  the 
parts  must  conform  ?  Surely,  Greek  manners  in  English  should 
be  a  still  grosser  improbability  than  a  Greek  name  transferred  to 
English  manners.  Ben's  persona  are  too  often  not  characters, 
but  derangements  ;— the  hopeless  patients  of  a  mad-doctor  rather! 
—exhibitions  of  folly  betraying  itself  in  spite  of  existing  reason 
and  prudence.  He  not  poetically,  but  painfully  exaggerates 
every  trait ;  that  is,  not  by  the  drollery  of  the  circumstance,  but 
by  the  excess  of  the  originating  feeling. 

But  to  this  we  might  reply,  that  far  from  being  thought  to  build  his  char 
acters  upon  abstract  ideas,  he  was  really  accused  of  representing  particu- 
lar persons  then  existing;  and  that  even  those  characters  which  appear  to 
be  the  most  exaggerated,  are  said  to  have  had  their  respective  archetypes 
in  nature  and  life. 

This  degrades  Jonson  into  a  libeller,  instead  of  justifying  him 
as  a  dramatic  poet.  Non  quod  verum  est,  sed  quod  verisimile, 
is  the  dramatist's  rule.  At  all  events,  the  poet  who  chooses 
transitory  manners,  ought  to  content  himself  with  transitory 
praise.  If  his  object  be  reputation,  he  ought  not  to  expect  fame. 
The  utmost  he  can  look  forwards  to,  is  to  be  quoted  by,  and  to 
enliven  the  writings  of,  an  antiquarian.  Pistol,  Nym,  and  id 
genus  omne,  do  not  please  us  as  characters,  but  are  endured  as 
fantastic  creations,  foils  to  the  native  wit  of  Falstaff— I  say  wit 
emphatically ;  for  this  character  so  often  extolled  as  the  master- 
piece of  humor,  neither  contains,  nor  was  meant  to  contain,  any 
ihumor  at  all. 


WHALLEY'S  LIFE  OF  JONSON. 

It  is  to  the  honor  of  Jonson's  judgment,  that  the  greatest  poet  of  our  na 
hon  had  the  same  opinion  of  Donne's  genius  and  wit ;  and  hath  preserved 
bart  of  him  from  perishing,  by  putting  his  thoughts  and  satire  into  modern 
rerse. 


188  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

Videlicet  Pope  ! 

He  said  further  to  Drummond,  Shakspeare  wanted  art,  and  sometimes 
sense  ;  for  in  one  of  his  plays  lie  brought  in  a  number  of  men,  saying  they 
had  suffered  shipwreck  in  Bohemia,  where  is  no  sea  near  by  a  hundred 
miles. 

I  have,  often  thought  Shakspeare  justified  in  this  seeming 
anachronism.  In  Pagan  times  a  single  name  of  a  German  king- 
dom might  well  be  supposed  to  comprise  a  hundred  miles  more 
than  at  "present.  The  truth  is,  these  notes  of  Drummond's  are 
more  disgraceful  to  himself  than  to  Jonson.  It  would  be  easy 
to  conjecture  how  grossly  Jonson  must  have  been  misunderstood 
and  what  he  had  said  in  jest,  as  of  Hippocrates,  interpreted  in 
earnest.  But  this  is  characteristic  of  a  Scotchman ;  he  has  no 
notion  of  a  jest,  unless  you  tell  him— "  This  is  a  joke!"— and 
still  less  of  that  finer  shade  of  feeling,  the  half-and-half,  in  which 
Englishmen  naturally  delight. 


Epilogue. 


EVERY  MAN  OUT  OF  HIS  HUMOR. 

The  throat  of  war  be  stopt  within  her  land, 
And  turtle-footed  peace  dance  fairie  rings 
About  her  court. 


Turtle-footed  is  a  pretty  word,  a  very  pretty  word  :  pray, 
what  does  it  mean  ?  Doves,  I  presume,  are  not  dancers  ;  and 
the  other  sort  of  turtle,  land  or  sea,  green-fat  or  hawksbill,  would, 
I  should  suppose,  succeed  better  in  slow  minuets  than  in  the  brisk 
rondillo.  In  one  sense,  to  be  sure,  pigeons  and  ring-doves  could 
not  dance  but  with  eclat — a  claw  ? 


POETASTER. 


Introduction. 


Light !  I  salute  thee,  but  with  wounded  nerves, 
Wishing  thy  golden  splendor  pitchy  darkness. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  Satan's  address  to  the  sun  i 
the  Paradise  Lost,  more  than  a  mere  coincidence  with  these  lines 
but  were  it  otherwise,  it  would  be  a  fine  instance,  what  usurious 


, 


NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  189 

interest  a  great  genius pays  in  borrowing.     It  would  not  be  dif- 
ficult to  gtve  a  detaded  psychological  proof  from  these  constant 
oatW.  of  anions  self-assertion,  that  Jonson  was  not  a  genfus 
a  creative  power      Snbtraet  that  one  thing,  and  yon  may  safely 
accumulate  on  ms  name  all  other  excellences  of  a  capons 
vigorous,  agde,  and  richly-stored  intellect.  *  ' 

Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Ovid.  While  slaves  be  false,  fathers  hard,  and  bawds  be  whorish- 

The  roughness  noticed  by  Theobald  and  Whalley,  may  be  cured 
by  a  simple  transposition  :_  *        Y 

While  fathers  hard,  slaves  false,  and  bawds  be  whorish. 
Act  iv.  sc.  3. 

»  Crisp.  O-oblatrant-furibund-fatuate-strenuous. 

O — conscious. 

in  ^  rild/°T  ^  !ntereStin2  essay>  or  rather  series  of  essays, 
m  a  penodical  work,  were  all  the  attempts  to  ridicule  new 
phrases  broUght  together,  the  proportion  observed  of  words  ridi- 
culed winch  have  been  adopted,  and  are  now  common,  sue  as 
strenuous,  conscious,  &c,  and  a  trial  made  how  far  any  grounds 
can  be  detected,  so  that  one  might  determine  beforehand  whether 
a  word  was  invented  under  the  conditions  of  assimilability  to 
our  language  or  not.     Thus  much  is  certain,  that  the  ridicuLs 

ZZall        TT  ^  right ''  "^  ShaksPear*  himself  could  not 
prevent  the  naturalization  of  accommodation,  remuneration,  kc 
or  fcwift  the  gross  abuse  even  of  the  word  idea. 


Act  i. 


FALL  OF  SEJANUS. 

Arruntius.  The  name  Tiberius, 
I  hope,  will  keep,  howe'er  he  hath  foregone 
The  dignity  and  power. 


Sure,  while  he  lives. 

Arr  And  dead,  it  comes  to  Drusus.    Should  he  fail, 
lo  the  brave  issue  of  Germanicus  ; 
And  they  are  three  :  too  many  (ha  ?)  for  him 
To  have  a  plot  upon  ? 

Sil.  I  do  not  know 


:90  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

The  heart  of  his  designs ;  but,  sure,  their  face 
Looks  farther  than  the  present. 

Arr.  By  the  gods, 
If  I  could  guess  he  had  but  such  a  thought, 
My  sword  should  cleave  him  down,  <fcc. 

The  anachronic  mixture  in  this  Arruntius  of  the  Roman  re- 
publican, to  whom  Tiberius  must  have  appeared  as  much  a  tyrant 
as  Sejanus  with  his  James-and-Charles-the-First  zeal  for  legiti- 
macy of  descent  in  this  passage,  is  amusing.  Of  our  great  names 
Milton  was,  I  think,  the  first  who  could  properly  be  called  a  re- 
publican. My  recollections  of  Buchanan's  works  are  too  faint  to 
enable  me  to  judge  whether  the  historian  is  not  a  fair  exception. 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Sejanus  : — 

Adultery  I  it  is  the  lightest  ill 
I  will  commit.     A  race  of  wicked  acts 
Shall  flow  out  of  my  anger,  and  o'erspread 
The  world's  wide  face,  which  no  posterity 
Shall  e'er  approve,  nor  yet  keep  silent,  (fee. 

The  more  we  reflect  and  examine,  examine  and  reflect,  the 
more  astonished  shall  we  be  at  the  immense  superiority  of  Shak- 
speare  over  his  contemporaries  :— and  yet  what  contemporaries  ! 
—giant  minds  indeed  !  Think  of  Jonson's  erudition,  and  the 
force  of  learned  authority  in  that  age  ;  and  yet  in  no  genuine 
part  of  Shakspeare's  works  is  there  to  be  found  such  an  absurd 
rant  and  ventriloquism  as  this,  and  too,  too  many  other  passages 
ferruminated  by  Jonson  from  Seneca's  tragedies  and  the  writings 
of  the  later  Romans.  I  call  it  ventriloquism,  because  Sejanus  is 
a  puppet,  out  of  which  the  poet  makes  his  own  voice  appear  to 

come. 

Act.  v.  Scene  of  the  sacrifice  to  Fortune.  This  scene  is  un- 
speakably irrational.  To  believe,  and  yet  to  scoff  at,  a  present 
miracle  is  little  less  than  impossible.  Sejanus  should  have  been 
made  to  suspect  priestcraft  and  a  secret  conspiracy  against  him. 

VOLPONE. 

This  admirable,  indeed,  but  yet  more  wonderful  than  admi- 
rable play,  is  from  the  fertility  and  vigor  of  invention,  character, 
language,  and  sentiment,  the  strongest  proof,  how  in  possible  it 


NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  191 

is  to  keep  up  any  pleasurable  interest  in  a  tale,  in  which  there 

is  no  goodness  of  heart  in  any  of  the   prominent  characters. 

After  the  third  act,  this  play  becomes  not  a  dead,  but  a  painful 

weight  on  the  feelings.     Zeluco  is  an  instance  of  the  same  truth' 

Bonario  and  Celia  should  have  been  made  in  some  way  or  other 

principals  in  the  plot;  which  they  might  have  been,  and  the 

objects  of  interest,  without  having  been  made  characters      In 

novels,  the  person,  in  whose  fate  you  are  most  interested,  is  often 

he  least  marked  character  of  the  whole.     If  it  were  possible  to 

lessen  the  paramountcy  of  Yolpone  himself,   a  most  delightful 

comedy  might  be  produced,  by  making  Celia  the  ward  or  niece 

oi  Oorvmo,  instead  of  his  wife,  and  Bonario  her  lover 


EPICENE. 

This  is  to  my  feelings  the  most  entertaining  of  old  Ben's 
comedies,  and,  more  than  any  other,  would  admit  of  being  brought 
out  anew,  if  under  the  management  of  a  judicious  and  sta^ge- 
understandmg  playwright;  and  an  actor,  who  had  studied 
Morose,  might  make  his  fortune. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Clerimont's  speech  : 

■  He  would  have  hanged  a  pewterer's  'prentice  once  on  a  Shrove  Tuesdav'a 
not  for  being  o'  that  trade,  when  the  rest  were  quiet  J 

Ihe  old  copies  read  quit,  i.  e.  discharged  from  working,  and  Rone  to  di- 
vert themselves.     Whalley's  note.  g 

It  should  be  quit,  no  doubt ;  but  not  meaning  <  discharged  from 
jrbng  •  fcc.-but  quit,  that  is,  acquitted.  The  pewtLr  wa" 
I  his  holiday  diversion  as  well  as  the  other  apprentices,  and 
hey  as  forward  m  the  riot  as  he.  But  he  alone  was  punished 
inder  pretext  of  the  riot,  but  in  fact  for  his  trade 

Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

WZZl  *Can  ^  l  Jet'  ^  °Ut  "  m°re  e™Pendions  method,  than  by 
WS  soundsT  ^  SerVantS  tLe  ^  °f  «  -d  m-  ~  ^e  Z 

What  does  'trunk'  mean  here  and  in  the  1st  scene  of  the  1st 
I  ■  Is  it  a  large"  ear-trumpet  ?_or  rather  a  tube,  such  as 
asses  from  parlor  to  kitchen,  instead  of  a  bell  » 


. 


192  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

"Whalley's  note  at  the  end. 

Some  critics  of  the  last  age  imagined  the  character  of  "<«"•»*• 
wholly  out  of  nature.  But  to  vindicate  our  poet,  Mr.  D-vden  tells  „  f.om 
tad  Man,  and  we  may  venture  to  take  his  word,  that  Jonsonwas  reaUy  a* 
nrlinted  with  a  person  of  this  whimsical  turn  of  m.nd  ;  and  as  humor  »  a 
S  qualityVe  poet  is  acquitted  from  the  charge  of  exh.b.tmg  a 
monster,  or  an  extravagant  or  unnatural  caricature. 

If  Dryden  had  not  made  all  additional  proof  superfluous  by 
his  own  plays,  this  very  vindication  would  evince  that  he  had 
formed  a  false  and  vulgar  conception  of  the  nature  and  condi- 
tions of  the  drama  and  dramatic  personation.  Ben  Jonson 
would  himself  have  rejected  such  a  plea  :— 

For  h«  knew,  poet  never  credit  gain'd 

By  writing  truths,  but  things,  like  truths,  well  feign  d. 

By  'truths'  he  means  'facts.'  Caricatures  are  not  less  so,  be- 
cause they  are  found  existing  in  real  life ■  G°°fj  demands 
characters,  and  leaves  caricatures  to  farce.  The  safest  and  truest 
defence  of  old  Ben  would  he  to  call  the  Ep.came  the  hest  ot 
farces  The  defect  in  Morose,  as  in  other  of  Jonson  s  dramatis, 
versos  lies  in  this  :-that  the  accident  is  not  a  prominence 
growing  out  of,  and  nourished  by,  the  character  which  still  cir- 
culates in  it,  hut  that  the  character,  such  as  it  is,  rises  out  oi,  or. 
rather,  consists  in,  the  accident.  Shakspeare's  comic  personages 
have  exquisitely  characteristic  features;  however  awry  dispro- 
portionate, and  laughable  they  may  be,  still,  like  Bardolpb  s  nose, 
they  are  features.  But  Jonson's  are,  either  a  man  with  a  huge 
wen,  having  a  circulation  of  its  own,  and  which  we  might  con- 
ceive amputated,  and  the  patient  thereby  losing  all  h.s  character ; 
or  they  are  mere  wens  themselves  instead  of  men-wens  personi- 
fied, or  with  eyes,  nose,  and  mouth  cut  out,  mandrake  fashion. 

Nota  Bene.  All  the  above,  and  much  more,  will  have  justiy 
been  said,  if,  and  whenever,  the  drama  of  Jonson  is  broughl ;  in  o 
comparisons  of  rivalry  with  the  Shaksperian.  But  this  shou  d 
not  be.  Let  its  inferiority  to  the  Shaksperian  be  at  once  fairly 
ownea,_but  at  the  same  time  as  the  inferiority  of  an  altogethei 
different  genus  of  the  drama.  On  this  ground  old  Ben  would 
still  maintain  his  proud  height.  He,  no  less  than  Shakspea™ 
stands  on  the  summit  of  his  hill,  and  looks  round  h.m  hke  - 
master.-though  his  be  Lattrig,  and  Shakspeare  ■  Sk.ddaw 


' 


NOTES   ON  BEN  JONSON.  l93 

THE  ALCHEMIST. 
Act  i.  sc.  2.     Face's  speech  :— 

Will  take  his  oath  o'  the  Greek  Xenophon, 
If  need  be,  in  his  pocket. 

Another  reading  is  '  Testament.' 

Probably,  the  meaning  is— that  intending  to  give  false  evi- 
dence, he  carried  a  Greek  Xenophon  to  pass  it  ofF  for  a  Greek 
Testament,  and  so  avoid  perjury— as  the  Irish  do,  by  contriving 
to  kiss  their  thumb-nails  instead  of  the  book. 
Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Mammon's  speech  : — 

I  will  have  all  my  beds  blown  up  ;  not  stuft : 

Down  is  too  hard.  I 

Thus  the  air-cushions,  though  perhaps  only  lately  brought  into 
use,  were  invented  in  idea  in  the  seventeenth  century  ! 


CATILINE'S   CONSPIRACY. 

A  fondness  for  judging  one  work  by  comparison  with  others 
perhaps  altogether  of  a  different  class,  argues  a  vulgar  taste.' 
Yet  it  is  chiefly  on  this  principle  that  the   Catiline  has  been 
rated  so  low.     Take  it  and  Sejanus,  as  compositions  of  a  particu 
lar  kind,  namely,  as  a  mode  of  relating  great  historical  events  in 
the  liveliest  and  most  interesting  manner,  and  I  can  not  help 
wishing  that  we  had  Whole  volumes  of  such  plays.     We  mi^ht 
I  rationally  expect  the  excitement  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
From  Goldsmith's  History  of  England,  as  that  of  Lear,  Othello 
kc.  from  the  Sejanus  or  Catiline. 
Act  i.  sc.  4. 

Cat.  Sirrah,  what  ail  you  ? 

Paq   Nothin  (He  spi™  one  of  his  boys  not  answer.) 

Best.  Somewhat  modest. 

Cat.  Slave,  I  will  strike  your  soul  out  with  my  foot,  &c. 

This  is  either  an  unintelligible,  or,  in  every  sense,  a  most  un- 
natural, passage,— improbable,  if  not  impossible,  at  the  moment 

VOL.  IV.  J 


194  .  ■  .  NOTES  ON.  BEN  JONSON. 

of  signing  and  swearing  such  a  conspiracy,  to  the  most  lihidinoua 
satyr.  The  very  presence  of  the  boys  is  an.  outrage  to  probabil- 
ity. I  suspect  that  these  lines  down  to  the  words  '  throat  opens.' 
should  be  removed  back  so  as  to  follow  the  words  c  on  this  part 
of  the  house,'  in  the  speech  of  Catiline  soon  after  the  entry  of 
the  conspirators.  A  total  erasure,  however,  would  be  the  best, 
or,  rather,  the  only  possible,  amendment. 
Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Sempronia's  speech  : — 

— He  is  but  a  new  fellow, 
An  inmate  here  in  Rome,  as  Catiline  calls  him — 

A  '  lodger'  would  have  been  a  happier  imitation  of  the  inquitv- 
nus  of  Sallust. 

Act  iv.  sc.  6.     Speech  of  Cethegus  : — 

Can  these  or  such  be  any  aids  to  us,  &e. 

What  a  strange  notion  Ben  must  have  formed  of  a  determined, 
remorseless,  all-daring  fool-hardiness,  to  have  represented  it  in 
such  a  mouthing  Tamburlane,  and  bombastic  tongue-bully  as  this 
Cethegus  of  his  !  • 

BARTHOLOMEW  FAIR. 

Induction.     Scrivener's  speech  : — 

If  there  be  never  a  servant-monster  i'  the  Fair,  who  can  help  it,  he  says, 
not  a  nest  of  antiques  ? 

The  best  excuse  that  can  be  made  for  Jonson,  and  in  a  some- 
what less  degree  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  respect  of  these 
base  and  silly  sneers  at  Shakspeare,  is,  that  his  plays  were  pres- 
ent to  men's  minds  chiefly  as  acted.  They  had  not  a  neat  edi- 
tion of  them,  as  we  have,  so  as,  by  comparing  the  one  with  the 
other,  to  form  a  just  notion  of  the  mighty  mind  that  produced 
the  whole.  At  all  events,  and  in  every  point  of  view,  Jonson 
stands  far  higher  in  a  moral  light  than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 
He  was  a  fair  contemporary,  and,  in  his  way,  and  as  far  as 
Shakspeare  is  concerned,  an  original.  But  Beaumont  and  Fletchei 
were  always  imitators  of,  and  often  borrowers  from  him,  and 
yet  sneer  at  him  with  a  spite  far  more  malignant  than  Jonson 
who,  besides,  has  made  noble  compensation  by  his  praises. 


■ 


NOTES   ON  BEN  JON  SON.  195 

Act  iLsc.  3 

Just.  I  mean  a  child  of  the  horn-thumb,  u  babe  of  booty,  boy,  a  cut 
purse. 

Does  not  this  confirm,  what  the  passage  itself  can  not  but  sug 
gest,  the  propriety  of  substituting  '  booty'  for  '  beauty'  in  Fal 
staff's  speech,  Henry  IV.  pt.  i.  act  i.  sc.  2,  '  Let  not  us,  &c.  ?' 

It  is  not  often  that  old  Ben  condescends  to  imitate  a  modera 
author  ;  but  Master  Dan.  Knockhum  Jordan  and  his  vapors  are 
manifest  reflexes  of  Nym  and  Pistol. 

lb.  sc.  5. 

Quart.  She'll  make  excellent  geer  for  the  coachmakers  here  in  Smithfield, 
to  anoint  wheels  and  axletrees  with. 

G-ood  !  but  yet  it  falls  short  of  the  speech  of  a  Mr.  Johnes, 
M.P.,  in  the  Common  Council;  on  the  invasion  intended  by 
Bonaparte  :  '  Houses  plundered — then  burnt  ; — sons  conscribed 
— wives  and  daughters  ravished,'  &c.  &c. — "But  as  for  you,  you 
luxurious  Aldermen  !  with  your  fat  will  he  grease  the  wheels 
of  his  triumphant  chariot  !" 

lb.  sc.  6. 

Cok.  Avoid  i'  your  satin  doublet,  Numps. 

This  reminds  me  of  Shakspeare's  '  Aroint  thee,  witch  !'  I  find 
in  several  books  of  that  age  the  words  aloigne  and  eloigne — that 
is, — '  keep  your  distance  !'  or  '  off  with  you  !'  Perhaps  '  aroint' 
was  a  corruption  of  '  aloigne'  by  the  vulgar.  The  common  ety 
mology  from  ronger  to  gnaw  seems  unsatisfactory. 

Act  iii.  sc.  4. 

Quart.  How  now,  Numps !  almost  tired  i' your  protectorship  ?  overpartec^ 
overparted  ? 

An  odd  sort  of  propheticality  in  this  Numps  and  old  Noll ! 
lb.  sc.  6.     Knockhum's  speech : — 

He  eats  with  his  eyes,  as  well  as  his  teeth. 

A  good  motto  for  the  Parson  in  Hogarth's  Election  Dinner,-— 
who  shows  how  easily  he  might  be  reconciled  to  the  Church  of 
Rome,  for  he  worships  what  he  eats. 
Act. v.  sc.  5. 

Pup.  Di.  It  is  not  prophane. 
Lan.  It  is  not  prophane,  he  says, 


ldQ  NOTES   ON   BEN  JONSON. 

Boy.  It  is  prophane. 

Pup.  It  is  not  prophane. 

Boy.  It  is  prophane. 

Pup.  It  is  not  prophane. 

Ban.  Well  said,  confute  him  with  Not,  still 

An  imitation  of  the  quarrel  between  Bacchus  and  the  Frogs  in 
Aristophanes : — 

XopoC. 

uA?m  fiijv  KSKpa^ojieadd  y', 
oitogov  7)  (pdpvyt;  uv  rjjJiCjv 
Xavduvri,  6C  rjfiepag, 

BpSKEHeKE^,    KOU^,    Kod%. 
AlOVVGOC. 

tovto)  yap  oh  viKrjaere. 

Xopog. 
ovSe  [irjv  rjfidg  ci>  ndvTGJc. 

kiovvooc. 
ovdt  firjv  vfitig  ye  6r\  p,'  ovdiirore. 


THE  DEVIL  IS  AN  ASS. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Pug.  Why  any :  Fraud, 
Or  Covetousness,  or  lady  Vanity, 
Or  old  Iniquity,  Til  call  him  hither. 

The  words  ir  italics  should  probably  be  given  to  the  master-devil,  Satan. 
"Whalley's  note. 

That  is,  against  all  probability,  and  with  a  (for  Jonson)  im- 
possible violation  of  character.  The  words  plainly  belong  to 
Pug,  and  mark  at  once  his  simpleness  and  his  impatience. 

lb.  sc.  4.     Fitz-dottrel's  soliloquy  : — 

Compare  this  exquisite  piece  of  sense,  satire,  and  sound  philoso- 
phy in  1616  with  Sir  M.  Hale's  speech  from  the  bench  in  a  trial 
of  a  witch  many  years  afterwards.^ 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Meercraft's  speech  : — 

Sir,  money's  a  whore,  a  bawd,  a  drudge. — 

I  doubt  not  that  '  money'  was  the  first  word  of  the  line,  and 
has  dropped  out : — 

Money !  Sir,  money's  a,  (fee. 

*  In  1664,  at  Bury  St.  Edmonds  on  the  trial  of  Rose  Cullender  and  Amy 
Duny.— Ed. 


NOTES' ON  BEN  JONSON.  197 


THE  STAPLE  OF  NEWS. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Pecunia's  speech  : — 

No,  he  would  ha'  done, 

That  lay  not  in  his  power  :  he  had  the  use 

Of  your  bodies,  Band  and  Wax,  and  sometimes  Statute's 

Read  (1815), 

— he  had  the  use  of 
Your  bodies,  &c. 

Now,  however,  I  doubt  the  legitimacy  of  my  transposition  of 
the  'of  from  the  beginning  of  this  latter  line  to  the  end  of  the 
one  preceding ; — for  though  it  facilitates  the  metre  and  reading 
of  the  latter  line,  and  is  frequent  in  Massinger,  this  disjunction 
of  the  proposition  from  its  case  seems  to  have  been  disallowed  by 
Jonson.     Perhaps  the  better  reading  is — 

0'  your  bodies,  &,a. — 

the  two  syllables  being  slurred  into  one,  or  rather  snatched,  cr 
sucked,  up  into  the  emphasized  'your.'  In  all  points  of  view, 
therefore,  Ben's  judgment  is  just ;  for  in  this  way,  the  line  can 
not  be  read,  as  metre,  without  that  strong  and  quick  emphasis  on 
'  your'  which  the  sense  requires  ; — and  had  not  the  sense  required 
an  emphasis  on  '  your,'  the  tmesis  of  the  sign  of  its  cases  '  of,' 
'  to,'  &c,  would  destroy  almost  all  boundary  between  the  dramatic 
verse  and  prose  in  comedy  : — a  lesson  not  to  be  rash  in  conjectural 
amendments.  1818. 
-  lb.  sc.  4. 

P.  jun.  I  love  all  men  of  virtue,  frommy  Princess. — 

'  Frommy,'  fromme,  pious,  dutiful,  &c. 
Act  v.  sc.  4.     Penny-boy  sen.  and  Porter  : — 
I  dare  not,  will  not,  think  that  honest  Ben  had  Lear  in  his 
mind  in  this  mock  mad  scene, 


198  NOTES  ON   BEN"  JONSON. 


THE  NEW  INN. 

Act  i.  sc,  1.     Host's  speech  : — 

A  heavy  purse,  and  then  two  turtles,  makes. — 

*  Makes,'  frequent  in  old  books,  and  even  now  used  in  some 
counties  for  mates,  or  pairs. 
lb.  sc.  3.     Host's  speech  : — 

— And  for  a  leap 
0'  the  vaulting  horse,  to  play  the  vaulting  house. — 

Instead  of  reading  with  "Whalley  '  ply'  for  «  play,'  I  would  sug- 
gest '  horse'  for  '  house.'  The  meaning  would  then  be  obvious 
and  pertinent.  The  punlet,  or  pun-maggot,  or  pun  intentional, 
'horse  and  house,'  is  below  Jonson.     The jeu-de-mots  just  be- 

low —  ,     , 

Read  a  lecture 

Upon  Aquinas  at  St.  Thomas  a  Wdtennga— 

had  a  learned  smack  in  it  to  season  its  insipidity. 
Tb.  sc.  6.     Lovel's  speech : — 

Then  shower'd  his  bounties  on  me,  like  the  Hours, 
That  open-handed  sit  upon  the  clouds, 
And  press  the  liberality  of  heaven 
Down  to  the  laps  of  thankful  men ! 

Like  many  other  similar  passages  in  Jonson,  this  is  eidog  y*U~ 
„0J/  idslv—a,  sight  which  it  is  difficult  to  make  one's  self  see,— a 
picture  my  fancy  can  not  copy  detached  from  the  words. 

Act  ii.  sc.  5.  Though  it  was  hard  upon  old  Ben,  yet  Felton, 
it  must  be  confessed,  was  in  the  right  in  considering  the  Fly, 
Tipto,  Bat  Burst,  &c,  of  this  play  mere  dotages.  Such  a  scene 
as  this  was  enough  to  damn  a  new  play  ;  and  Nick  Stuff  is  worse 
stij, — most  abominable  stuff  indeed  ! 

Act  hi.  sc.  2.     Lovel's  speech  : — 

So  knowledge  first  begets  benevolence, 
Benevolence  breeds  friendship,  friendship  love.— - 

Jonson  has  elsewhere  proceeded  thus  far;  but  the  part  most 


NOTES    ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.  199 

difficult  and  delicate,  yet,  perhaps,  not  the  least  capable  of  being 
both  morally  and  poetically  treated,  is  the  union  itself,  and  what, 
even  in  this  life,  it  can  be. 


NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

Seward's  Preface.     1750 

The  King  And  No  King,  too,  is  extremely  spirited  in  all  its  characters , 
Arbaces  holds  up  a  mirror  to  ah  men  of  virtuous  principles  but  violent 
passions.  Hence  he  is,  as  it  were,  at  once  magnanimity  and  pride,  patience 
and  fury,  gentleness  and  rigor,  chastity  and  incest,  and  is  one  of  the  finest 
mixtures  of  virtues  and  vices  that  any  poet  has  drawn,  &a. 

These  are  among  the  endless  instances  of  the  abject  state  to 
which  psychology  had  sunk  from  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  to  the 
middle  of  the  present  reign  of  George  III.  ;  and  even  now  it  is 
but  just  awaking. 

lb.  Seward's  comparison  of  Julia's  speech  in  the  Two  Gen- 
tlemen of  Verona,  act  iv.  last  scene — 

Madam,  'twas  Ariadne  passioning,  &o. 

with  Aspatia's  speech  in  the  Maid's  Tragedy — 

I  stand  upon  the  sea-beach  now,  &c.     Act  ii. 

and  preference  of  the  latter. 

It  is  strange  to  take 'an  incidental  passage  of  one  writer,  in- 
tended only  for  a  subordinate  part,  and  compare  it  with  the  same 
thought  in  another  writer,  who  had  chosen  it  for  a  prominent  and 
principal  figure. 

lb.  Seward's  preference  of  Alphonso's  poisoning  in  A  Wife  for 
a  Month,  act  i.  sc.  1,  to  the  passage  in  King  John,  act  v.  sc.  7, — 

Poison'd,  ill  fare  !  dead,  forsook,  cast  off! 

Mr.  Seward !  Mr.  Seward  !  you  may  be,  and  I  trust  you  are,  an 
ano-el ;  but  you  were  an  ass. 
lb. 

Every  reader  of  taste  will  see  how  superior  this  is  to  the  quotation  from 
|  Shakspeare. 

Of  what  taste  ? 


200 


NOTES  ON   BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 


lb.  Seward's  classification  of  the  plays: — 

Surely  Monsieur  Thomas,  the  Chances,  Beggar's  Bush,  and  the 
Pilgrim,  should  have  been  placed  in  the  very  first  class  !  But  the 
whole  attempt  ends  in  a  woful  failure. 


HARRIS'S  COMMENDATORY  POEM  ON  FLETCHER. 

I'd  have  a  state  of  wit  convok'd,  which  hath 
A  pcwer  to  take  up  on  common  faith  : — 

This  is  an  instance  of  that  modifying  of  quantity  by  emphasis, 
without  which  our  elder  poets  can  not  be  scanned.  'Power,' 
here,  instead  of  being  one  long  syllable— pow'r— must  be  sound  • 
ed,  not  indeed  as  a  spondee,  nor  yet  as  a  trochee  ;  but  as — u  u  ;— 
the  first  syllable  is  1\. 

We  can,  indeed,  never  expect  an  authentic  edition  of  our  eldei 
dramatic  poets  (for  in  those  times  a  drama  was  a  poem),  until 
some  man  undertakes  the  work,  who  has  studied  the  philosophy 
of  metre.  This  has  been  found  the  main  torch  of  sound  restora- 
tion in  the  Greek  dramatists  by  Bentley,  Porson,  and  their  fol- 
lowers ;— how  much  more,  then,  in  writers  in  our  own  language 
It  is  true  that  quantity,  an  almost  iron  law  with  the  Greek,  is  in 
English  rather  a  subject  for  a  peculiarly  fine  ear,  than  any  law 
or  even  rule  ;  but,  then,  instead  of  it,  we  have,  first,  accent ; 
secondly,  emphasis  ;  and  lastly,  retardation,  and  acceleration  of 
the  times  of  syllables  according  to  the  meaning  of  the  words,  the 
passion  that  accompanies  them,  and  even  the  character  of  the 
person  that  uses  them.  With  due  attention  to  these,— above  all, 
to  that,  which  requires  the  most  attention  and  the  finest  taste,  the 
character,  Massinger,  for  example,  might  be  reduced  to  a  rich 
and  yet  regular  metre.  But  then  the  regular  must  be  first 
known  ;— though  I  will  venture  to  say,  that  he  who  does  not  find 
a  line  (not  corrupted)  of  Massinger's  flow  to  the  time  total  of  a 
trimeter  catalectic  iambic  verse,  has  not  read  it  aright.  But  by 
virtue  of  the  last  principle— the  retardation  or  acceleration  of. 

time we  have  the  proceleusmatic  foot  u  u  u  o,  and  the  disport- 

daws ,  not  to  mention  the  choriamb  us,  the  ionics, 

pajons,  and  epitrites.  Since  Dryden,  the  metre  of  our  poets  leads 
ro  the  sense  :  in  our  elder  and  more  genuine  bards,  the  sense,  in- 
cluding* the  passion    leads   to  the  metrs.     Read  even  Donne's 


NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  201 

satires  as  he   meant  them  to  be  read,  and   as  the   sense  and 
passion  demand.,  and  you  will  find  in  the  lines  a  manly  harmony. 


LIFE  OF  FLETCHER  IN  STOCKD ALE'S  EDITION.     1811 
In  general  their  plots  are  more  regular  than  Shakspeare's.— 


Tfi  1S  tme>  if  true  at  all,  only  before  a  court  of  criticism 
which  judges  one  scheme  by  the  laws  of  another  and  a  diverse 
one.  Shakspeare's  plots  have  their  own  laws  or  regulcB,  and  ac- 
cording to  these  they  are  regular. 


MAID'S  TRAGEDY. 

Act  1.     The  metrical  arrangement  is  most  slovenly  throughout. 
Strat.  As  well  as  masque  can  be,  &<s. 

and  all  that  follows  to  •  who  is  return'd'— is  plainly  blank  verbe. 

and  falls  easily  into  it. 

,    lb.     Speech  of  Melantius  : — 

These  soft  and  silken  wars  are  not  for  me : 
The  music  must  be  shrill,  and  all  confus'd, 
That  stirs  my  blood  ;  and  then  I  dance  with  arms. 

What  strange  self-trumpeters  and  tongue-bullies  all  the  bravt, 
soldiers  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  !  Yet  I  am  inclined  to 
think  it  was  the  fashion  of  the  age  from  the  Soldier's  speech  in 
the  Counter  Scuffle ;  and  deeper  than  the  fashion  B.  and  F.  did 
not  fathom. 

lb.  Speech  of  Lysippus  : — 


Yes,  but  this  lady 

Walks  discontented,  with  her  wat'ry  eyes 

Bent  on  the  earth,  &e. 


Opulent  as  Shakspeare  was,  and  of  his  opulence  prodigal,  he 
yet  would  not  have  put  this  exquisite  piece  of  poetry  in  the 
mouth  of  a  no-character,  or  as  addressed  to  a  Melantius.  I  wish 
that  B.  and  F.  had  written  poems  instead  of  tragedies. 


202  NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

lb. 

Mel.  I  might  run  fiercely,  not  more  hastily, 
Upon  my  foe. 
Read 

I  might  run  more  fiercely,  not  more  hastily. — 

lb.  Speech  of  Calianax  : — 

Office  !  I  would  I  could  put  it  off!  I  am  sure  I  sweat  quite  through  my 
office ! 

The  syllable  off  reminds  the  testy  statesman  of  his  robe,  and  he 
carries  on  the  image. 

lb.  Speech  of  Melantius  : — 

—Would  that  blood, 
That  sea  of  blood,  that  I  have  lost  in  fight,  <fec. 

All  B.  and  F.'s  generals  are  pugilists,  or  cudgel-fighters,  that 
boast  of  their  bottom  and  of  the  claret  they  have  shed. 
Tb.  The  Masque  ; — Cinthia's  speech  : — 

But  I  will  give  a  greater  state  and  glory, 
And  raise  to  time  a  noble  memory 
Of  what  these  lovers  are. 

I  suspect  that '  nobler,'  pronounced  as  '  nobiler' —  o  — ,  was  the 
poet's  word,  and  that  the  accent  is  to  be  placed  on  the  penulti- 
mate of  '  memory.'     As  to  the  passage — 

Yet,  while  our  reign  lasts,  let  us  stretch  our  power,  &o. 

removed  from  the  text  of  Cinthia's  speech  by  these  foolish  editors 
as  unworthy  of  B.  and  F. — the  first  eight  lines  are  not  worse,  and 
the  last  couplet  incomparably  better,  than  the  stanza  retained. 
Act  ii.    Amintor's  speech  : — 


Oh,  thou  hast  nam'd  a  word,  that  wipes  away 
All  thoughts  revengeful !  In  that  sacred  name, 
'  The  kin";,'  there  lies  a  terror. 


It  is  worth  noticing  that  of  the  three  greatest  tragedians,  Mas 
singer  was  a  democrat,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  the  most  servile 
jure  diyino  royalists,  and  Shakspeare  a  philosopher ;  if  aught 
personal,  an  arstocrat. 


NOTES   ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.  20S 

A  KINO  AND   NO  KINO. 

Act  iv.     Speech  of  Tigranes  :— 

She,  that  forgat  the  greatness  of  her  grief 

And  miseries,  that  must  follow  such  mad  passions, 

Endless  and  wild  as  women  !  &c. 

Seward's  note  and  suggestion  of 'in.' 

It  would  be  amusing  to  learn  from  some  existing  friend  of  Mr 
beward  what  he  meant,  or  rather  dreamed,  in  this  note.     It  is 
certainly  a  difficult  passage,  of  which  there  are  two  solutions  ■_ 
one  that  the  writer  was  somewhat  more  injudicious  than  usual  ; 
-the  other,  that  he  was  very,  very  much  more  profound  and 
Shaksperian  than  usual.     Seward's  emendation,  at  all  events,  is 
light  and  obvious.     Were  it  a  passage  of  Shakspeare,  I  should  not 
hesitate  to  interpret  it  as  a  characteristic  of  Tigranes'  state  of 
mind,  disliking  the  very  virtues,  and  therefore  half^onsciously  rep- 
resenting them  as  mere  products  of  the  violence  of  the  sex  in 
general  in  all  their  whims,  and  yet  forced  to  admire,  and  to  feel 
and  to  express  gratitude  for,  the   exertion  in  his  own  instance. 
Ihe  inconsistency  of  the  passage  would  be  the  consistency  of  the 
author.     But  this  is  above  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 


THE  SCORNFUL  LADY. 

Act  ii.    Sir  Roger's  speech : — 

-Did  I  for  this  consume  my  quarters  in  meditations,  vows,  and  woo'd  her 
1  feoical  epstles  ?  Did  I  expound  the  Owl,  and  undertake,  with  labor 
nd  expense  the  recollection  of  those  thousand  pieces,  consumed  in  ceiara 
nd  tobaeeo-shops,  of  that  our  honored  Englishman,  Nic.  Brpughton?  &t 

Strange  that,  neither  Mr.  Theobald,  nor  Mr.  Seward,  should 
>ave  seen  that  this  mock  heroic  speech  is  in  full-mouthed  blank 
erse  .  Had  they  seen  this,  they  would  have  seen  that  'quar- 
ts is  a  substitution  of  the  players  for' quires'  or  <  squares'  (that 
0  ot  paper  : —  v 

Consume  my  quires  in  meditations,  vows, 
And  woo'd  her  in  heroical  epistles,  (cc) 


20  i  NOTES  ON   BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER. 

They  ought,  likewise,  to  have  seen  that  the  abbreviated  '  Ni.  Br.' 
of  the  text  was  properly  'Mi.  Dr.'— and  that  Michael  Drayton, 
not  Nicholas  Broughton,  is  here  ridiculed  for  his  poem  The  Owl 
and  his  Heroical  Epistles,   {eld) 

lb.  Speech  of  Younger  Loveless  : — 

Fill  him  some  wine.     Thou  dost  not  see  me  mov'd,  &c. 

These  Editors  ought  to  have  learnt,  that  scarce  an  instance 
occurs  in  B.  and  F.  of  a  long  speech  not  in  metre.  This  is  plain 
starinsr  blank  verse. 


THE  CUSTOM  OF  THE  COUNTRY. 

I  can  not  but  think  that  in  a  country  conquered  by  a  nobler 
race  than  the  natives,  and  in  which  the  latter  became  villains 
and  bondsmen,  this  custom,  lex  merchetce,  may  have  been  intro- 
duced for  wise  purposes— as  of  improving  the  breed,  lessening  the 
antipathy  of  different  races,  and  producing  a  new  bond  of  rela- 
tionship between  the  lord  and  the  tenant,  who,  as  the  eldest 
born,  would,  at  least,  have  a  chance  of  being,  and  a  probability 
of  being  thought,  the  lord's  child.  In  the  "West  Indies  it  can  not 
have  these  effects,  because  the  mulatto  is  marked  by  nature  dif- 
ferent from  the  father,  and  because  there  is  no  bond,  no  law  ?*o 
custom,  but  of  mere  debauchery.     1815. 

Acti.  sc.  1.  Rutilio's  speech  : — 

Yet  if  you  play  not  fair  play,  <fec. 
Evidently  to  be  transposed  and  read  thus  : — 

Yet  if  you  play  not  fair,  above  board  too, 
111  tell  you  what — 

I've  a  foolish  engine  here  : — I  say  no  more — 
But  if  your  Honor's  guts  are  not  enchanted — 

licentious  as  the  comic  metre  of  B.  and  F.  is— a  far  more  law 
less,  and  yet  far  less  happy,  imitation  of  the  rhythm  of  animated 
talk  in  real  life  than  Massinger's— still  it  is  made  worse  than  it 
really  is  by  ignorance  of  the  halves,  thirds,  and  two  thirds  of  a 
line  which  B.  and  F.  adopted  from  the  Italian  and  Spanish  dram- 
atists.    Thus  in  Rutilio's  speech  : — 


. 


NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  205 

Though  I  confess 

Any  man  would  desire  to  have  her,  and  by  any  means,  &c. 

Correct  the  whole  passage — 

Though  I  confess 

Any  man  would 

Desire  to  have  her,  and  by  any  means, 

At  any  rate  too,  yet  this  common  hangman 

That  hath  whipt  off  a  thousand  maids'  he~ads  already— 

That  he  should  glean  the  harvest,  sticks  in  my  stomach ! 

In  all  comic  metres  the  gulping  of  short  syllables,  and  the  ab 
deviation  of  syllables  ordinarily  long  by  the  rapid  pronunciation 
of  eagerness  and  vehemence,  are  not  so  much  a  license,  as  a  law 
—a  faithful  copy  of  nature,  and  let  them  be  read  characteristi- 
cally, the  times  will  be  found  nearly  equal.  Thus  the  three 
words  marked  above  make  a  choriambus  — o  u — ,  or  perhaps  a 
pceo?t  primus— u  uu;a  dactyl,  by  virtue-of  comic  rapidity,  being 
only  equal  to  an  iambus  when  distinctly  pronounced.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  all  B.  and  F.'s  works  might  be  safely  corrected  by  at- 
tention to  this  rule,  and  that  the  editor  is  entitled  to  transposi- 
tions of  all  kinds,  and  to  not  a  few  omissions.  For  the  rule 
of  the  metre  once  lost— what  was  to  restrain  the  actors  from 
interpolation  ? 


THE  ELDER  BROTHER. 

Act  1.  sc.  2.   Charles's  speech  : — 

— For  what  concerns  tillage, 
Who  better  can  deliver  it  than  Virgil 
In  his  Georgics  ?  and  to  cure  your  herds, 
His  Bucolics  is  a  master-piece. 

Fletcher  was  too  good  a  scholar  to  fall  into  so  gross  a  blun- 
der, as  Messrs.  Sympson  and  Colman  suppose.  I  read  the  pas- 
sage  thus  : — 

— For  what  concerns  tillage, 
Win  better  can  deliver  it  than  Virgil 
In  his  Georgics,  or  to  cure  your  herds ; 
(His  Bucolics  are  a  master-piece).    But  when,  <fec. 

Jealous  of  Virgil's  honor,  he  is  afraid  lest,  by  referring  to  the 


206  NOTES   ON  BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER. 

Georgics  alone,  he  might  be  understood  as  undervaluing  the  pre- 
ceding work.  '  Not  that  I  do  not  admire  the  Bucolics,  too,  in 
their  way  : — But  when,  &c.' 

Act  iii.  sc.  3.  Charles's  speech  : — 

—She  has  a  face  looks  like  a  story ; 
The  story  of  the  heavens  looks  very  like  her. 


Seward  reads  '  glory  ;'  and  Theobald  quotes  from  Philaster— 
That  reads  the  story  of  a  woman's  face.— 

I  can  make  sense  of  this  passage  as  little  as  Mr.  Seward  ;— the 
passage  from  Philaster  is  nothing  to  the  purpose.  Instead  of  <  a 
story,"  I  have  sometimes  thought  of  proposing  '  Astrsea.'  (ee) 

lb.  Angellina's  speech  : — 

— You're  old  and  dim,  Sir, 
And  the  shadow  of  the  earth  eclips'd  your  judgment. 

Inappropriate  to  Angellina,  but  one  of  the  finest  lines  in  our 
language. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.  Charles's  speech  : — 

And  lets  the  serious  part  of  life  run  by 
As  thin  neglected  sand,  whiteness  of  name. 
You  must  be  mine,  &c. 

Seward's  note,  and  reading — 

— "Whiteness  of  name, 
You  must  be  mine ! 

Nonsense  !  '  Whiteness  of  name'  is  in  apposition  to  '  the  serious 
part  of  life,'  and  means  a  deservedly  pure  reputation.  The  fol- 
lowing line— 'You  must  be  mine!'  means— '  Though  I  do  not 
?njoy  you  to-day,  I  shall  hereafter,  and  without  reproach.'  (/) 

THE  SPANISH  CURATE. 
Act  iv.  sc.  7.  Amaranta's  speech  : — 

And  still  I  push'd  him  on,  as  he  had  teen  coming. 
Perhaps  the  true  word  is  '  conning,'  that  is,  learning,  or  read- 
ing,  and  therefore  inattentive. 


NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  207 

WIT  WITHOUT  MONEY. 
Act  i.  Valentine's  speech  : — 

One  without  substance,  &e. 

The  present  text,  and  that  proposed  by  Seward,  are  equally 
,  vile.  I  have  endeavored  to  make  the  lines  sense,  though  the 
,  whole  is,  I  suspect,  incurable  except  by  bold  conjectural  reforma- 
1  tion.     I  would  read  thus  : — 

One  without  substance  of  herself,  that's  woman; 
Without  the  pleasure  of  her  life,  that's  wanton  ; 
Tho'  she  be  young,  forgetting  it ;  tho'  fair, 
Making  her  glass  the  eyes  of  honest  men, 
Not  her  own  admiration. 

4  That's  wanton,'  or,  'that  is  to  say,  wantonness.' 
Act  ii.  Valentine's  speech  : — 

Of  half-a-crown  a  week  for  pins  and  puppets— 
As  there  is  a  syllable  wanting  in  the  measure  here.     Seward. 

A  syllable  wanting !     Had  this  Seward  neither  ears  nor  fin- 
gers ?     The  line  is  a  more  than  usually  regular  iambic  hendeca- 
syllable. 
lb. 

With  one  man  satisfied,  with  one  rein  guided ; 

With  one  faith,  one  content,  one  bed ; 

Aged,  she  makes  the  wife,  preserves  the  fame  and  issue ; 

A  widow  is,  cfec. 

s'  apaid'— contented— too  obsolete  for  B.  and  F.  ?     If  not,  wo 
night  read  it  thus  : — 

Content  with  one  faith,  with  one  bed  apaid, 

She  makes  the  wife,  preserves  the  fame  and  issue  ; 

)r  it  may  be — 

— with  one  breed  apaid — 

hat  is,  satisfied  with  one  set  of  children,  in  opposition  to — 

A  widow  is  a  Christmas-box,  &c. 
Jolman's  note  on  Seward's  attempt  to  put  this  play  into  metre, 


208  NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

The  editors,  and  their  contemporaries  in  general,  were  igno- 
rant of  any  but  the  regular  iambic  verse.  A  study  of  the  An* 
tophanic  and  Plautine  metres  would  have  enabled  them  to  reduce 
B.  and  F.  throughout  into  metre,  except  where  prose  is  really  in- 
tended. 

THE  HUMOROUS   LIEUTENANT. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Second  Ambassador's  speech  :— 

— When  yQur  angers, 
Like  so  many  brother  billows,  rose  together, 
And,  curling  up  your  foaming  crests,  defied,  &e. 

This  worse  than  superfluous  ■  like'  is  very  like  an  interpolation 
of  some  matter  of  fact  critic— all  pus,  prose  atque  venerium.  The 
'your'  in  the  next  line,  instead  of  'their,'  is  likewise  yours,  Mr. 
Critic  ! 

Act  li.  sc.  1.     Timon's  speech  : — 

Another  of  a  new  way  will  be  look'd  at— 

We  must  suspect  the  poets  wrote,  '  of  a  new  day:    So  immediately  after, 

Time  may 

For  all  his  wisdom,  yet  give  us  a  day. 

Seward's  Note. 

For  this  very  reason  I  more  than  suspect  the  contrary, 
lb.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Leucippe  : — 

I'll  put  her  into  action  for  a  waistcoat. 
What  we  call  a  riding-habit,— some  mannish  dress. 

THE  MAD   LOVER. 

Act  iv.     Masque  of  beasts  : — 

—  This  goodly  tree, 
An  usher  that  still  grew  before  his  lady, 
Wither'd  at  root :  this,  for  he  could  not  woo, 
A  grumbling  lawyer :  &c. 

Here  must  have  been  omitted  a  line  rhyming  to  'tree;'  and 
the  words  of  the  next  line  have  been  transposed  : — 


NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  20if 

—  This  goodly  tree, 
Which  leafless,  and  obscur'd  with  moss  you  see, 
An  usher  this,  that  'fore  his  lady  grew, 
Wither'd  at  root :  this,  for  he  could  not  woo,  &c. 


THE  LOYAL  SUBJECT. 

It  is  well  worthy  of  notice,  and  yet  has  not  been,  I  believe, 
noticed  hitherto,  what  a  marked  difference  there  exists  in  the 
dramatic  writers  of  the  Elizabetho-JacobaBan  age— (Mercy  on 
me  !  what  a  phrase  for  <  the  writers  during  the  reigns  of  Eliza- 
beth and  James  I.!')— in  respect  of  their  political  opinions. 
Shakspeare,  in  this  as  in  all  other  things,  himself  and  alone,  gives 
the  permanent  politics  of  human  nature,  and  the  only  predilec- 
tion, which  appears,  shows  itself  in  his  contempt  of  mobs  and 
the  populacy.  Massinger  is  a  decided  Whig ;— Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  high-flying,  passive- obedience  Tories.  The  Spanish 
dramatists  furnished  them  with  this,  as  with  many  other  ingre- 
dients. By-the-ly,  an  accurate  and  familiar  acquaintance  with 
all  the  productions  of  the  Spanish  stage  previously  to  1620,  is  an 

indispensable  qualification  for  an  editor  of  B.  and  F. ; and  with 

this  qualification  a  most  interesting  and  instructive  edition  might 
be  given.  This  edition  of  Colman's  (Stockdale,  1811)  is  below 
cj  iticism. 

In  metre  B.  and  F.  are  inferior  to  Shakspeare,  on  the  one 
hand,  as  expressing  the  poetic  part  of  the  drama,  and  to  Massin- 
ger, on  the  other,  in  the  art  of  reconciling  metre  with  the  natural 
rhythm  of  conversation, — in  which,  indeed,  Massinger  is  unrivalled. 
Read  him  aright,  and  measure  by  time,  not  syllables,  and  no 
lines  can  be  more  legitimate,— none  in  which  the  substitution  of 
equipollent  feet,  and  the  modifications  by  emphasis,  are  managed 
with  such  exquisite  judgment.  B.  and  F.  are  fond  of  the  twelve 
syllable  (not  Alexandrine)  line,  as — 

Too  many  fears  'tis  thought  too :  and  to  nourish  those— 

Ibis  has,  often,  a  good  effect,  and  is  one  of  the  varieties  most 
common  in  Shakspeare 


;10       '         NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER. 


RULE  A  WIFE   AND   HAVE   A  WIFE. 

Act  iii.     Old  "Woman's  speech  : — 

— I  fear  he  will  knock  my 
Brains  out  for  lying. 

Mr.  Seward  discards  the  words  '  for  lying,'  because  '  most  of 
he  things  spoke  of  Estifania  are  true,  with  only  a  little  exagge- 
ation,  and  because  they  destroy  all  appearance  of  measure.' 
Oolman's  Note. 

Mr.  Seward  had  his  brains  out.  The  humor  lies  in  Estifania'a 
having  ordered  the  Old  Woman  to  tell  these  tales  of  her  ;  for 
though  an  intriguer,  she  is  not  represented  as  other  than  chaste  ; 
and  as  to  the  metre,  it  is  perfectly  correct. 

lb. 

Marg.  As  you  love  me,  give  way. 

Leon.  It  shall  be  better,  I  will  give  none,  madam,  &q. 

The  meaning  is  :  'It  shall  be  a  better  way,  first ; — as  it  is, 
I  will  not  give  it,  or  any  that  you  in  your  present  mood  would 
wish.' 

THE  LAWS   OF  CANDY. 

Act  i.     Speech  of  Melitus  : — 

Whose  insolence  and  never-yet  match'd  pride 
Can  by  no  character  be  well  express'd, 
But  in  her  only  name,  the  proud  Erota. 

Dolman's  note. 

The  poet  intended  no  allusion  to  the  word  'Erota'  itself;  but 
Bays  that  her  very  name,  '  the  proud  Erota,'  became  a  character 
and  adage ;  as  we  say,  a  quixote  or  a  Brutus  :  so  to  say  an 
1  Erota,'  expressed  female  pride  and  insolence  of  beauty. 

lb.     Speech  of  Antinous  : — 

Of  my  peculiar  honors,  not  deriv'd 

From  successary,  but  purchas'd  with  my  blood. — 

The  poet  doubtless  wrote  '  successary,'  which,  though  not 
adopted  in  our  language,  would  be,  on  many  occasions,  as  here, 
a  much  more  significant  phrase  than  ancestry. 


NOTES   ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHEK.  211 

THE  LITTLE  FRENCH  LAWYER. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Dinant's  speech  : — 

Are  you  become  a  patron  too  ?    'Tis  a  new  one, 
•       No  more  on't,  &c. 

Seward  reads  : — 

Are  you  become  a  patron  too  ?     How  long 

Have  you  been  conning  this  speech  ?     'Tis  a  new  one,  <fcc. 

If  conjectural  emendation,  like  this,  be  allowed,  we  might  ven- 
ture to  read  - — 

Are  you  become  a  patron  to  a  new  tune  ? 
or, 

Are  you  become  a  patron  ?    'Tis  a  new  -time. 

Ib-  {SS) 

Din.  Thou  wouldst  not  willingly 
Live  a  protested  coward,  or  be  call'd  one  ? 
Cler.  Words  are  but  words. 
Din.  Nor  wouldst  thou  take  a  blow  ? 

Seward's  note. 

0  miserable  !  Dinant  sees  through  Cleremont's  gravity,  and 
the  actor  is  to  explain  it.  '  Words  are  but  words,'  is  the  last 
struggle  of  affected  morality.  . 


VALENTINIAN. 

Act  i.  sc.  3. 

It  is  a  real  trial  of  charity  to  read  this  scene  with  tolerable 
emper  towards  Fletcher.  So  very  slavish— so  reptile-— are  the 
feelings  and  sentiments  represented  as  duties.  And  yet  remem- 
>er  he  was  a  bishop's  son,  and  the  duty  to  Gi-od  was  the  supposed 
►agis. 

Personals,  including  body,  house,  home,  and  religion ; — property, 
ubordination,  and  inter-community; — these  are  the  fundamentals 
f  society.  I  mean  here,  religion  negatively  taken, — so  that  the 
erson  be  not  compelled  to  do  or  utter,  in  relation  of  the  soul  to 
rod,  what  would  be,  in  that  person,  a  lie ; — such  as  to  force  a 
ran  to  go  to  church,  or  to  swear  that  he  believe js  what  he  does 


212  NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT   ^ND   FLETCHER. 

not  believe.  Religion,  positively  taken,  may  be  a  grea£  and  use- 
ful privilege,  but  can  not  be  a  right, — were  it  for  this  only  that  it 
can  not  be  pre-defined.  The  ground  of  this  distinction  between 
negative  and  positive  religion,  as  a  social  right,  is  plain.  No  one 
of  my  fellow-citizens  is  encroached  on  by  my  not  declaring  to  him 
what  I  believe  respecting  the  super-sensual ;  but  should  every 
man  be  entitled  to  preach  against  the  preacher,  who  could  hear 
any  preacher  ?  Now  it  is  different  in  respect  of  loyalty.  There 
we  have  positive  rights,  but  not  negative  rights  ; — for  every  pre- 
tended negative  would  be  in  effect  a  positive ; — as  if  a  soldier 
had  a  right  to  keep  to  himself,  whether  he  would,  or  would. not, 
fight.  Now,  no  one  of  these  fundamentals  can  be  rightfully 
attacked,  except  when  the  guardian  of  it  has  abused  it  to  subvert 
one  or  more  of  the  rest.  The  reason  is,  that  the  guardian,  as  a  I 
fluent,  is  less  than  the  permanent  which  he  is  to  guard.  He  is 
the  temporary  and  mutable  mean,  and  derives  his  whole  value 
from  the  end.  In  short,  as  robbery  is  not  high  treason,  so  neither 
is  every  unjust  act  of  a  king  the  converse.  All  must  be  attacked 
and  endangered.  "Why?  Because  the  king,  as  a.  to  A.,  is  a  mean 
to  A.  or  subordination,  in  a  far  higher  sense  than  a  proprietor,  as< 
b.  to  B.  is  a  mean  to  B.  or  property. 
Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Claudia's  speech  : — 

Chimney-pieces !  &c. 

The  whole  of  this  speech  seems  corrupt;  and  if  accurately 
printed, — that  is,  if  the  same  in  all  the  prior  editions,  irremedi- 
able but  by  bold  conjecture.  '  Till  my  tackle,'  should  be,  I  think, 
ivhile,  &c. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1.  B.  and  F.  always  write  as  if  virtue  or  goodness 
were  a  sort  of  talisman,  or  strange  something,  that  might  be  lost 
without  the  least  fault  on  the  part  of  the  owner.  In  short,  their 
chaste  ladies  value  their  chastity  as  a  material  thing, — not  as  art. 
act  or  state  of  being;  and  this  mere  thing  being  imaginary, 
no  wonder  that  all  their  women  are  represented  with  the  minds 
of  strumpets,  except  a  few  irrational  humorists,  far  less  capable 
of  exciting  our  sympathy  than  a  Hindoo,  who  has  had  a  basin 
of  cow-broth  thrown  over  him; — for  this,  though  a  debasing 
superstition,  is  still  real,  and  we  might  pity  the  poor  wretch, 
though  we  can  not  help  despising  him.  But  B.  and  F.'s  Lucinas 
are  clumsy  fictions.     It  is  too  plain  that  the  authors  had  no  one 


NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  213 

idea  of  chastity  as  a  virtue,  but  only  such  a  conception  as  a  blind 
man  might  have  of  the  power  of  seeing,  by  handling  an  ox's  eye. 
In  The  Q,ueen  of  Corinth,  indeed,  they  talk  differently;  but  it  is 
all  talk,  and  nothing  is  real  in  it  but  the  dread  of  losing  a  reputa- 
tion. Hence  the  frightful  contrast  between  their  women  (even 
those  who  are  meant  for  virtuous)  and  Shakspeare's.  So,  for 
instance,  The  Maid  in  the  Mill :— a  woman  must  not  merely 
have  grown  old  in  brothels,  but  have  chuckled  over  every  abomi- 
nation committed  in  them  with  a  rampant  sympathy  of  imagina- 
tion, to  have  had  her  fancy  so  drunk  with  the  minutim  of  lechery 
as  this  icy  chaste  virgin  evinces  hers  to  have  been. 

It  would  be  worth  while  to  note  how  many  of  these  plays  are 
founded  on  rapes,— how  many  on  incestuous  passions,  and  how 
many  on  mere  lunacies.     Then  their  virtuous  women  are  either 
crazy  superstitions  of  a  mere  bodily  negation  of  having  been  acted 
on,  or  strumpets  in  their  imaginations  and  wishes,  or,  as  in  this 
Maid  in  the  Mill,  both  at  the  same  time.     In  the  men,  the  love 
is  merely  lust  in  one   direction,— exclusive    preference    of  one 
object.      The  tyrant's  speeches  are  mostly  taken  from  the  mouths 
of  indignant  denouncers  of  the  tyrant's  character,  with  the  sub- 
stitution of  T  for  'he,'  and  the  omission  of  the  prefatory  'he  acts 
as  if  he  thought'  so  and  so.     The  only  feelings  they  can  possibly 
excite  are  disgust  at  the  Aeciuses,  if  regarded  as  sane  loyalists, 
or  compassion,  if  considered  as  Bedlamites.     So  much  for  their 
tragedies.     But  even  their  comedies  are,  most  of  them,  disturbed 
by  the  fantasticalness,  or  gross  caricature,  of  the  persons  or  inci- 
dents.    There   are  few  characters  that   you  can  really  like,— 
(even  though  you  should  have  erased  from  your  mind  all  the  filth 
which  bespatters  the   most  likable  of  them,  as  Piniero  in  The 
Island  Princess  for  instance)— scarcely  one  whom  you  can  love. 
How  different  this  from  Shakspeare,  who  makes  one  have   a 
port  of  sneaking  affection  even  for  his  Barn  ardines ;— whose  very 
fagos  and  Richards  are  awful,  and  by  the  counteracting  power 
pf  profound  intellects,  rendered  fearful  rather  than  hateful;— and 
ken  the  exceptions,  as  Goneril  and  Regan,  are  proofs  of 'super- 
lative judgment  and  the  finest  moral  tact,  in  being  Mt  utter 
pnsters,  nulla  virtute  redemptce,  and  in  being  kept  out  of  sight 
ls  much  as  possible,— they  being,  indeed,  enly  means  for  the 
xcitement  and  deepening  of  noblest  emotions  towards  the  Lear, 
;ordeha,  &c.  and  employed  with  the  severest  economy!     But 


2M  NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

even  Shakspeare's  grossness— that  which  is  really  so,  indepen- 
dently  of  the  increase  in  modern  times  of  vicious  associations  with 
thino-s  indifferent— (for  there  is  a  state  of  manners  conceivable  so 
pure!  that  the  language  of  Hamlet  at  Ophelia's  feet  might  be  a 
harmless  rallying,  or  playful  teasing,  of  a  shame  that  would 
exist  in  Paradise)— at  the  worst,  how  diverse  in  kind  is  it  from 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  !  In  Shakspeare  it  is  the  mere  generali- 
ties of  sex,  mere  words  for  the  most  part,  seldom  or  never  distinct 
images,  all  head-work,  and  fancy-drolleries;  there  is  no  sensation 
supposed  in  the  speaker.  I  need  not  proceed  to  contrast  this 
with  B.  and  F. 

ROLLO. 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  most  energetic  of  Fletcher's  tragedies. 

He  evidently  aimed  at  a  new  Richard  III.  in  Rollo  ;— hut  as  in 

all  his   other  imitations  of  Shakspeare,  he  was  not  philosopher 

enough  to  bottom  his  original.     Thus,  in  Rollo,  he  has  produced 

a  mere  personification  of  outrageous  wickedness,  with  no  funda- 

mental  characteristic  impulses  to  make  either  the  tyrant's  words 

or  actions  philosophically  intelligible.     Hence  the  most  pathetic 

situations  border  on  the  horrible,  and  what  he  meant  for  the  ter* 

rible,  is  either  hateful,  to  fiiorixbv,  or  ludicrous.     The  scene  of 

Baldwin's   sentence  in  the  third   act  is  probably  the   grandest 

working  of -passion  in  all   B.  and  F.'s  dramas ;— but  the  very 

magnificence  of  filial   affection  given  to   Edith,   in  this  noble 

scene,  renders  the  after-scene— (in  imitation  of  one  of  the  least 

Shaksperian  of  all  Shakspeare's  works,  if  it  be  his,  the  scene 

between  Richard  and  Lady  Anne)— in  which  Edith  is  yielding 

to  a  few  words  and  tears,  not  only  unnatural,  but  disgusting.     In 

Shakspeare,  Lady  Anne  is  described  as  a  weak,  vain,  very  woman 

throughout. 

Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Gis.  He  is  indeed  the  perfect  character 
Of  a  good  man,  and  so  his  actions  speak  him. 

This  character  of  Aubrey,  and  the  whole  spirit  of  this  and 
several  other  plays  of  the  same  authors,  are  interesting  as  traits 
of  the  morals  which  it  was  fashion  xble  to  teach  in  the  reigns  of 
James  I.  and  his  successor,  who  died  a  martyr  to  them.     Stage, 


I 


NOTES   ON  BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  215 

pulpit,  law,  fashion,— all  conspired  to  enslave  the  realm  Mas 
singer's  plays  breathe  the  opposite  spirit ;  Shakspeare's  the  spirit 
of  wisdom  which  is  for  all  ages.  By-the-by,  the  Spanish  drama- 
tists—Calderon,  in  particular,— had  some  influence  in  this  respect 
of  romantic  loyalty  to  the  greatest  monsters,  as  well  as  in  the  busy 
intrigues  of  B.  and  F.'s  plays. 


Act 


THE  WILDGOOSE  CHASE. 
ii.  sc.  1.     Belleur's  speech  : 

— That  wench,  metkinks, 
If  I  were  but  well  set  on,  for  she  is  a  fable, 
If  I  were  but  hounded  right,  and  one  to  teach  me. 

Sympson  reads  <  affable,'  which  Colman  rejects,  and  says/ the 
next  line  seems  to  enforce'  the  reading  in  the  text 
>    Pity,  that  the  editor  did  not  explain  wherein  the  sense,  '  seem 
mgly  enforced  by  the  next  line,'  consists.     May  the  true  word  be 
^  a  sable,   that  is,  a  black  fox,  hunted  for  its  precious  fur  ?     Or 
at-able,  —as  we  now  say,—'  she  is  come-at-able  ?' 


A  WIFE  FOR  A  MONTH. 
Act  iv.  sc.  1.     Alphonso's  speech  :— 

Betwixt  the  cold  bear  and  the  raging  Hon 
Lies  my  safe  way. 

Seward's  note  and  alteration  to 

'Twixt  the  cold  bears,  far  from  the  raging  lion-- 

This  Mr.  Seward  is  a  blockhead  of  the  provoking  species,  la 
|  itch  for  correction,  he  forgot  the  words-'  lies  my  safe  way  »• 
^he  Bear  is  the  extreme  pole,  and  thither  he  would  travel  over 
'     space  contained  between  it  and  <  the  raging  lion.' 


21G  NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

THE  PILGRIM. 

Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

Alinda's  interview  with  her  father  is  lively,  and  happily  hit 
off ;  but  this  scene  with  Roderigo  is  truly  excellent.  Altogether, 
indeed,  this  play  holds  the  first  place  in  B.  and  F.'s  romantic 
entertainments,  Lustspiele,  which  collectively  are  their  happiest 
performances,  and  are  only  inferior  to  the  romance  of  Shakspeare 
in  the  As  You  Like  It,  Twelfth  Night,  &c. 

Alin.  To-day  you  shall  wed  Sorrow, 
And  Repentance  will  come  to-morrow. 

Head  «  Penitence,'  or  else — 

Repentance,  she  will  come  to-morrow. 

THE  QUEEN  OF  CORINTH. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

Merione's  speech.  Had  the  scene  of  this  tragi-comedy  been 
laid  in  Hindostan  instead  of  Corinth,  and  the  gods  here  addressed 
been  the  Yeeshnoo  and  Co.  of  the  Indian  Pantheon,  this  rant 
would  not  have  been  much  amiss. 

In  respect  of  style  and  versification,  this  play  and  the  follow- 
ing of  Bonduca  may  be  taken  as  the  best,  and  yet  as  charac- 
teristic, specimens  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  dramas.  I  par- 
ticularly instance  the  first  scene  of  the  Bonduca.  Take  Shak- 
speare's  Richard  II.,  and  having  selected  some  one  scene  of 
about  the  same  number  of  lines,  and  consisting  mostly  of  long 
speeches,  compare  it  with  the  first  scene  in  Bonduca, — not  for 
the  idle  purpose  of  finding  out  which  is  the  better,  but  in  order 
to  see  and  understand  the  difference.  The  latter,  that  of  B.  and 
F.,  you  will  find  a  well-arranged  bed  of  flowers,  each  having  its 
separate  root,  and  its  position  determined  aforehand  by  the  will 
of  the  gardener, — each  fresh  plant  a  fresh  volition.  In  the  for 
mer  you  see  an  Indian  fig-tree,  as  described  by  Milton  ;— all  ii! 
growth,  evolution,  yivsaiq  ; — each  line,  each  word  almost,  beget 
the  following,  and  the  will  of  the  writer  is  an  interfusion,  i 
continuous  agency,  and  not  a  series  of  separate  acts.  Shakspear< 
is  the  height,  breadth,  and  depth  of  Genius  :  Beaumont  an< 
Fletcher  the  excellent  mechanism,  in  juxtaposition  and  succe?' 
liion,  of  talent. 


NOTES   ON  BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHEK.  217 


THE  NOBLE  GENTLEMAN. 

Why  have  the  dramatists  of  the  times  of  Elizabeth,  James  I, 
and  the  first  Charles  become  almost  obsolete,  with  the  exception 
of  Shakspeare  ?  Why  do  they  no  longer  belong  to  the  English, 
being  once  so  popular  ?  And  why  is  Shakspeare  an  exception  ? 
—One  thing,  among  fifty,  necessary  to  the  full  solution  is,  that 
they  all  employed  poetry  and  poetic  diction  on  unpoetic  sub- 
jects, both  characters  and  situations,  especially  in  their  comedy. 
Now  Shakspeare  is  all,  all  ideal,— of  no  time,  and  therefore  for 
all  times.  Read,  for  instance,  Marine's  panegyric  in  the  first 
scene  of  this  play  : — 

Know 

The  eminent  court,  to  them  that  can  be  wise, 

And  fasten  on  her  blessings,  is  a  sun,  &c. 

What  can  be  more  unnatural  and  inappropriate — (not  only  is, 
but  must  be  felt  as  such) — than  such  poetry  in  the  mouth  of  a 
silly  dupe  ?  In  short,  the  scenes  are  mock  dialogues,  in  which 
the  poet  solus  plays  the  ventriloquist,  but  can  not  keep  down 
his  own  way  of  expressing  himself.  Heavy  complaints  have  been 
made  respecting  the  transposing  of  the  old  plays  by  Cibber ;  but 
it  never  occurred  to  these  critics  to  ask,  how  it  came  that  no 
one  ever  attempted  to  transpose  a  comedy  of  Shakspeare's. 


THE  CORONATION. 

Act  i.     Speech  of  Seleucus  : — 

Altho'  he  be  my  enemy,  should  any 
Of  the  gay  flies  that  buzz  about  the  court, 
Sit  to  catch  trouts  i'  the  summer,  tell  me  so, 
I  durst,  &e. 

Jolman's  note. 

Pshaw  !  -  'Sit'  is  either  a  misprint  for  '  set,'  or  the  old  and 
till  provincial  word  for  '  set,'  as  the  participle  passive  of '  seat' 
r  '  set.'  I  have  heard  an  old  Somersetshire  gardener  say  :— 
Look,  Sir  !  I  set  these  plants  here ;  those  yonder  I  sit  yester- 

VOL.  rv.  •  K 


218  NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER. 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Arcadius  : — 

Nay,  some  will  swear  they  love  their  mistress, 
Would  hazard  lives  and  fortunes,  &c 

Read  thus  : — 

Nay,  some  will  swear  they  love  their  mistress  so, 
They  would  hazard  lives  and  fortunes  to  preserve 
One  of  her  hairs  brighter  than  Berenice's, 
Or  young  Apollo's  ;  and  yet,  after  this,  &c. 

f  They  would  hazard' — furnishes  an  anapaest  for  an  iambus, 
<  And  yet,'  which  must  be  read,  anyet,  is  an  instance  of  the  en- 
clitic force  in  an  accented  monosyllable.  '  And  yet,'  is  a  com- 
plete iambus  ;  but  anyet  is,  like  spirit,  a  dibrach  u  u,  trocheized, 
however,  by  the  arsis  or  first  accent  damping,  though  not  extin- 
guishing, the  second. 

WIT  AT  SEVERAL  WEAPONS. 

Act  i.     Oldcraft's  speech  : — 

I'm  arm'd  at  all  points,  &c. 

It  would  be  very  easy  to  restore  all  this  passage  to  metre, 
by  supplying  a  sentence  of  four  syllables,  which  the  reasoning 
almost  demands,  and  by  correcting  the  grammar.     Read  thus  :— 

Arm'd  at  all  points  'gainst  treachery,  I  hold 

My  humor  firm.     If,  living,  I  can  see  thee 

Thrive  by  thy  wits,  I  shall  have  the  more  courage, 

Dying,  to  trust  thee  with  my  lands.     If  not, 

The  best  wit,  I  can  hear  of,  carries  them. 

For  since  so  many  in  my  time  and  knowledge, 

Rich  children  of  the  city,  have  concluded 

Fur  lack  of  wit  in  beggary,  I'd  rather 

Make  a  wise  stranger  my  executor, 

Than  a  fool  son  my  heir,  and  have  my  lands  call'd 

After  my  wit  than  name  :  and  that's  my  nature  ! 

lb.     Oldcraft's  speech  : — 

To  prevent  which  I  have  sought  out  a  match  for  her. 

Read 

Which  to  prevent  I've  sought  a  match  out  for  her 


N';TES   ON   BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHER.  219 

lb.     Sir  Gregory's  speech  : — 

Do  you  think 

Til  have  any  of  the  wits  hang  upon  me  after  I  am  married  once  ? 

Read  it  thus  : — 

Do  you  think 
That  I'll  have  any  of  the  wits  to  hang 
Upon  me  after  I  am  married  once  ? 

and  afterwards — 

Is  it  a  fashion  in  London 
To  marry  a  woman,  and  never  to  see  her  ? 

The  superfluous  <  to'  gives  it  the  Sir  Andrew  Ague-cheek  char- 
acter. 

THE  FAIR  MAID  OF  THE  INN. 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Albertus  : — 

But,  Sir, 
By  my  life,  I  vow  to  take  assurance  from  you, 
That  right  hand  never  more  shall  strike  my  sou, 


Chop  his  hand  off 


* 


In  this  (as,  indeed,  in  all  other  respects  ;  but  most  in  this)  it  is 
-hat  Shakspeare  is  so  incomparably  superior  to  Fletcher  and  his 
xiend,— m  judgment  !  What  can  be  conceived  more  unnatural 
md  motiveless  than  this  brutal-  resolve  ?  How  is  it  possible  to 
eel  the  least  interest  in  Albertus  afterwards  ?  or  in  Cesario  after 
lis  conduct  ? 

THE  TWO  NOBLE  KINSMEN. 

On  comparing  the  prison  scene  of  Palamon  and  Arcite,  Act  ii. 

:.  2,  with  the  dialogue  between  the  same  speakers,  Act  i.  sc.  2, 

can  scarcely  retain  a  doubt  as  to  the  first  act's  having  been 

iitten  by  Shakspeare.     Assuredly  it  was  not  written  by  B.  and 

I  hold  Jonson  more  probable  than  either  of  these  two. 

The  main  presumption,  however,  for  Shakspeare's  share  in  this 
lay  rests  on  a  point,  to  which  the  sturdy  critics  of  this  edition  (and 
ideed  all  before  them)  were  blind,_that  is,  the  construction  of 
ie  blank  verse,  which  proves  beyond  all  doubt  an  intentional 
rutation,  if  not  the  proper  hand,  of  Shakspeare.    Now,  whatever 


220 


EXTRACTS  FROM.  LETTERS 


improbability  there  is  in  the  former  (which  supposes  Fletcher 
conscious  of  the  inferiority,  the  too  poematic  minus-AmmaM 
nature,  of  his  versification,  and  of  which  there  is  neither  proof, 
nor  likelihood),  adds  so  much  to  the  probability  of  the  latter.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  harshness  of  many  of  these  very  passages,  a 
harshness  unrelieved  by  any  lyrical  inter-breathings,  and  still  more 
the  want  of  profundity  in  the  thoughts,  keep  me  from  an  abso- 
lute decision. 

Act  i.  sc.  3.     Emilia's  speech  : — 

Since  his  depart,  his  sports, 

Tbo'  craving  seriousness  and  skill,  <fce. 

I  conjecture  '  imports,'  that  is,  duties  or  offices  of  importance. 
The  flow  of  the  versification  in  this  speech  seems  to  demand  the 
trochaic  ending  —  u  ;  while  the  text  blends  jingle  and  hisses  to 
the  annoyance  of  less  sensitive  ears  than  Fletcher's— not  to  say, 
Shakspeare's. 

THE  WOMAN  HATER. 

Act  i.  sc.  2. 

This  scene  from  the  beginning  is  prose  printed  as  blank  verse, 
down  to  the  line — 

E'en  all  the  valiant  stomachs  in  the  court- 
where  the  verse  recommences.     This  transition  from  the  prose  to 
the  verse  enhances,    and  indeed  forms,   the   comic  effect,  (hh) 
Lazarillo  concludes  his  soliloquy  with  a  hymn  to  the  goddess  of 
plenty. 

EXTRACTS  OF  TWO  LETTERS 

OF   MR.    H.  C.   ROBINSON,    GIVING  SOME  ACCOUNT   OF  TWO   LECTURES   OF   MR.    001* 
RIPGE,    DELIVERED    IN    MAY,    1808.      (U) 

May  7th,  1808. 
My  dear  Friend, 

On  receiving  your  threatening  letter  I  inclosed  it  in  a  notf 
to  Coleridge,  and  on  calling  upon  him  before  the  lecture,  found  a 
letter  for  me,  &c.  He  has  offered  to  give  me  admission  cob 
stantly  ;  I  shall  accept  his  offer  whenever  I  can,  and  give  you  i 
weekly  letter  on  the  subject.  I  shall  not  pretend  to  tell  yoi 
what  he  says,  but  mention  the  topics  he  runs  over.     Every  thinf 


OF   ME.    ROBINSON. 


221 


he  observes  on  morals  will  be  as  familiar  to  you  as  all  he  says  on 
criticism  is  to  me  ;  for  he  has  adopted  in  all  respects  the  German 
doctrines  :  and  it  is  a  useful  lesson  to  me  how  those  doctrines  are 
to  be  clothed  with  original  illustrations,  and  adapted  to  an  Eng- 
lish audience. 

The  extraordinary  lecture  on  Education  was  most  excellent, 
delivered  with  great  animation,  and  extorting  praise  from  those, 
whose  prejudices  he  was  mercilessly  attacking :  he  kept  his  au- 
dience on  the  rack  of  pleasure  and  offence  two  whole  hours  and 
ten  minutes  ;  and  few  went  away  during  the  lecture.    He  began 
by  establishing  a  common-place  distinction  neatly  between  the 
objects,  and  the  means  of  education,  which  he  observed  to  be 
"perhaps  almost  the  only  safe  way  of  being  useful."     Omitting 
a  tirade,  which  you  can  well  supply,  on  the  object  of  Education" 
I  come  to  the  means  of  forming  the  character,  the  cardinal  rules 
of  early  education.     These  are,  First,  to  work  by  love  and  so 
generate  love  :  Secondly,  to  habituate  the  mind  to  intellectual 
accuracy  or  truth  :  Thirdly,  to  excite  power.      1.  He  enforced  a 
great  truth  strikingly.     "  My  experience  tells  me,  that  little  is 
taught  or  communicated  by  contest  or  dispute,  but  every  thing  by 
sympathy  and  love."    "  Collision  elicits  truth  only  from  the  hard- 
est head."     <;  I  hold  motives  to  be  of  little  influence  compared 
with  feelings."     He  apologized  for  early  prejudices  with  a  self- 
correction—"  and  yet  what  nobler  judgment  is  there  than  that 
a  child  should  listen  with  faith,  the  principle  of  all  good  things, 
to  his  father  or  preceptor."     Digressing  on  Rousseau  he  told  an 
anecdote  pleasantly  :  se  non  e  vero  e  ben  trovato.     A  friend  had 
defended  the  negative  education  of  Rousseau.     Coleridge  led  him 
fnto  his  miserably  neglected  garden,  choked  with  weeds.    "  What 
1  this  ?"  said  he.     "  Only  a  garden,"  C.  replied,  "  educated  ac- 
cording to  Rousseau's  principles  !" 

On  punishment  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  humanity  eloquently. 
fte  noticed  the  good  arising  from  the  corporal  inflictions  of  our 
p-eat  schools,  in  the  Spartan  fortitude  it  excited ;  in  the  gener- 
>us  sympathy  and  friendship  it  awakened  ;  and  in  the  point  of 
lonor  it  enforced.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  showed  this  very 
eference  to  honor  to  be  a  great  evil  as  a  substitute  for  virtue  and 
>rinciple.  School-boys,  he  observed,  lived  in  civil  war  with  theii 
nasters.  They  are  disgraced  by  a  lie  told  to  their  fellows  ;  it  is 
n  honor  to  impose   on  the  common  enemy  :  thus  the  mind  i? 


222  EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS 

prepared  for  every  falsehood  and  injustice,  when  the  interest  of 
the  party,  when  honor  requires  it.  On  disgraceful  punishments,, 
such  as  fools-caps,  &c.  he  spoke  with  great  indignation,  and  de 
clared  that  even  now  his  life  is  embittered  by  the  recollection  of 
ignominious  punishment  he  suffered  when  a  child  ;  it  comes  to 
him  in  disease,  and  when  his  mind  is  dejected.  This  part  was 
delivered  with  fervor.  Could  all  the  pedagogues  of  the  United 
Kingdom  have  "been  before  him  !  2.  On  Truth  too  he  was 
very  judicious  :  he  advised  beginning  with  the  enforcement  of 
great  accuracy  of  assertion  in  young  children.  The  parent,  he  ob- 
served, who  should  hear  his  child  call  a  round  leaf  long,  would 
do  well  to  fetch  one  instantly.  Thus  tutored  to  render  words 
conformable  with  ideas,  the  child  would  have  the  habit  of  truth 
before  he  had  any  notion  or  thought  of  moral  truth.  "  We  should 
not  early  begin  with  impressing  ideas  of  virtue,  goodness,  &c. 
which  the  child  could  not  comprehend."  Then  he  digressed  a 
VAllemagne  on  the  distinction  between  obscure  ideas  and  clear 
notions.^  Our  notions  resemble  the  index  and  hand  of  the  dial ; 
our  feelings  are  the  hidden  springs  which  impel  the  machine  ; 
with  this  difference  that  notions  and  feelings  react  on  each  other 
reciprocally.  The  veneration  for  the  Supreme  Being,  sense  of 
mysterious  existence,  was  not  to  be  profaned  by  the  intrusion  of 
clear  notions.  Here  he  was  applauded  by  those  who  do  not  pre- 
tend to  understand  religion,  while  the  Socinians  of  course  felt  pro- 
found contempt  for  the  lecturer.  I  find  from  my  notes,  that  C. 
was  not  very  methodical  :  you  will  therefore  excuse  my  not 
being  more  so 

1.2.  "  Stimulate  the  heart  to  love  and  the  mind  to  be  early 
accurate,  and  all  other  virtues  will  rise  of  their  own  accord,  and 
all  vices  will  be  thrown  out."  When  treating  of  punishments, 
he  dared  to  represent  the  text,  "  He  that  spareth  the  rod  spoileth 
the  child,"  as  a  source  of  much  evil.  He  feelingly  urged  the  re- 
pugnance of  infancy  to  quiet  and  gloom,  and  the  duty  of  attend- 
ing to  such  indications,  observing  that  the  severe  notions  enter- 
tained of  Religion  were  more  pernicious  than  all  that  had  been 
written  by  Voltaire  and  such  "  paltry  scribblers."  Considering 
this  phrase  as  the  gilding  of  the  pill  I  let  it  pass.  Coleridge  is 
right  in  the  main,  but  Voltaire  is  no  paltry  scribbler.  Ajoropos, 
I  was  every  twenty  minutes  provoked  with  the  lecturer  for  little 
*  Conceptions  ? — S.  C. 


OF  MR.   ROBINSON.  223 

unworthy  compliances — for  occasional  conformity.  But  n'importe. 
He  says  such  a  number  of  things,  both  good  and  useful  at  the 
same  time,  that  I  can  tolerate  these  drawbacks  or  rather  make- 
weights. 3.  In  speaking  of  education  as  a  mean  of  strengthening 
the  character,  he  opposed  our  system  of  "cramming"  children,  and 
especially  satirized  the  moral  rules  for  juvenile  readers  lately  in- 
troduced. "  I  infinitely  prefer  The  Seven  Champions  of  Christen- 
dom, Jack  the  Giant-killer,  and  such  like  :  for  at  least  they  make 
the  child  forget  himself :  but  when  in  your  good-child  stories,  a 
little  boy  comes  in  and  says,  '  Mamma,  I  met  a  poor  beggar-man 
and  gave  him  the  sixpence  you  gave  me  yesterday.  Did  I  do 
right  ?'  '  0  yes,  my  dear,  to  be  sure  you  did  ;' — This  is  not 
virtue  but  vanity  : — Such  lessons  do  not  teach  goodness,  but, 
if  I  might  hazard  such  a  word,  goodiness."  What  Goody  he  re- 
ferred to,  I  know  not,  for  he  praised  Mrs  Trimmer  afterwards. 
He  added,  "  The  lesson  to  be  inculcated  should  be,  let  the  child 
be  good  and  know  it  not."  "  Instructors  should  be  careful  not  to 
let  the  intellect  die  of  plethora." 

The  latter  part  of  the  lecture  was  taken  up. with  a  defence  of 
education  for  the  Poor,  &c.  &c.  He  lugged  in  most  unnecessarily 
an  attack  upon  Malthus,  and  was  as  unfair  in  his  representation 
as  Hazlitt  in  his  answer.  He  also  noticed  Cobbett,  &c.  In  the 
end  he  eulogized  Dr.  Bell's  plan  of  education,  and  concluded  by  a 
severe  attack  upon  Lancaster  for  having  stolen  from  Dr.  Bell  all 
that  is  good  in  his  plans  : — expatiated  with  warmth  on  the  bar- 
barous, ignominious  punishments  introduced  by  Lancaster,  &c. 
&c.  He  concluded  by  gratulating  himself  on  living  in  this  age. 
"For  I  have  seen  what  infinite  good  one  man  can  do  by  persever- 
ing in  his  efforts  to  resist  evil  and  spread  good  over  human  life  : 
and  if  I  were  called  upon  to  say,  which  two  men  in  my  own  time, 
had  been  most  extensively  useful,  and  who  had  done  most  for 
humanity,  I  should  say  Mr.  Clarkson  and  Dr.  Bell,  (kk)  I  can 
not  answer  for  the  terms  of  this  sentence  :  the  surprise  I  felt  at 
the  sudden  introduction  of  the  name  of  Clarkson  perhaps  made 
me  lose  the  immediately  preceding  words. 


May  15th,  1808. 
My  dear  Friend, 

Be  assured  you  have  imposed  upon  me  no  burthensome  task 

To  write  to  you  is  as  much  a  relief  from  my  ordinary  employ- 


224:  EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS 

merit  as  it  would  be  for  a  man  to  write  with  his  right  hand  who 
should  have  been  condemned  as  a  penance  to  write  with  his  left. 
Yet  what  we  might  do  against  our  will,  becomes  our  will  at  last, 
and  perhaps  I  feel  some  awkwardness  when  I  leave  the  dry,  un- 
interesting and  mechanical  works  of  the  office  to  discourse  witn 
you  on  Coleridge's  lectures  ;  I  find  I  am  a  bad  reporter,  and  that 
I  have  not  the  art  of  condensing  the  spirit  of  an  hour's  declama- 
tion into  a  page  of  post  paper.  However,  you  will  kindly  accept 
all  I  can  give  you. 

I  have  only  two  lectures  to  speak  about,  and  shall  not  pretend 
to  speak  of  them  in  the  order  in  which  Coleridge  spoke,  since 
there  was  no  order  in  his  speaking.  I  came  in  late  one  day  and 
found  him  in  the  midst  of  a  deduction  of  the  origin  of  the  fine 
arts  from  the  necessities  of  our  being,  which  a  friend  who  accom- 
panied me  could  make  neither  head  nor  tail  of,  because,  he  had 
not  studied  German  metaphysics. 

The  first  "free  art"  of  man  (Architecture)  arose  from  the  im- 
pulse to  make  his  habitation  beautiful.  The  second  arose  from 
the  instinct  to  provide  himself  food.  The  third  was  the  love  of 
dress.  Here  C.  atoned  for  his  metaphysics  by  his  gallantry;  he 
declared  that  the  passion  for  dress  in  females  has  been  the  great 
cause  of  the  civilization  of  mankind.  "When  I  behold  the  orna- 
ments which  adorn  a  beautiful  woman,  I  see  the  mirror  of  that 
instinct  which  leads  man  not  to  be  content  with  what  is  necessary 
or  useful,  but  impels  him  to  the  beautiful."  4.  From  the  neces- 
sity of  self-defence  springs  the  military  art,  and  this  has  produced 
the  keenest  sense  of  honor,  the  finest  sensibility,  the  character  of 
a  gentleman.  5.  The  ornaments  of  speech  are  eloquence  and 
poetry.  Here  C.  distinguished  these  arts  by  the  characteristic, 
that  poetry  is  a  general  impulse : — he  might  have  said,  it  gives 
the  character  of  Avhat  is  universal  to  what  still  remains  particu- 
lar. Eloquence  impels  to  particular  acts.  "  Let  us  rise  against 
Philip,"  said  the  Athenians  when  Demosthenes  sat  down,  for 
Demosthenes  had  been  eloquent.  Apropos,  Kant  observes  that 
the  oration  treats  an  affair  of  business,  as  if  it  were  a  thing  of 
imagination,  while  the  poet  handles  a  work  of  fancy,  as  if  it 
were  a  matter  of  business.  Kant  speaks  (and  Schiller  expatiates 
on  this)  of  the  method  of  the  two  artists.  C.  refers  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  arts,  but  both  assertions  amount  to  the  same  thing 
In  this  same  lecture  Coleridge  contrived  to  work  into  his  speech 


OF   MR.    ROBINSON.  225 

Kant's  admirably  profound  definition  of  the  naif,  that  it  is  nature 
putting  art  to  shame ;  and  he  also  digressed  into  a  vehement 
but  well-merited  declamation  against  those  soi-disant  philoso- 
phers, who  deny  the  nobler  powers  of  man,  his  idealizing  poetic 
faculty,  and  degrade  him  to  the  beast :  and  declared  he  could 
not  think  of  Buffon  without  horror ; — an  assertion  with  which  I 
sympathize,  and  which  is  far  less  exceptionable  than  his  abuse 
of  Voltaire. 

Here  are  metaphysics  enough  for  the  present.  Now  for  a  crit- 
ical remark  or  two. — 0[  Shakspeare  C.  observed,  that  he  alone 
preserved  the  individuality  of  his  characters  without  losing  his 
own.  High  moral  feeling  is  to  be  deduced  from,  though  it  is  not 
in,  Shakspeare,  for  the  sentiment  of  his  age  was  less  pure  than 
that  of  the  preceding.  Not  a  vicious  passage  in  all  Shakspeare, 
though  there  are  many  which  are  gross  (for  grossness  depends  on 
the  age).  Shakspeare  surpasses  all  poets,  1st,  in  the  purity  of 
his  female  characters.  (N.B.  He  declared  his  conviction  that 
no  part  of  Richard  III.  except  the  character  of  Richard,  was 
written  by  Shakspeare,  doubtless  with  a  silent  reference  to  the 
disgusting  character  of  Lady  Anne.)  They  have  no  Platonic  re- 
finement, but  are  perfect  wives,  mothers,  &c.  Secondly,  he  is 
admirable  for  the  close  union  of  morality  and  passion.  Shak- 
speare conceived  that  these  should  never  be  separated  ;  in  this 
differing  from  the  Greek  who  reserved  the  chorus  for  the  moral- 
ity. The  truth  he  teaches  he  told  in  character  and  with  passion. 
They  are  the  "  sparks  from  heated  iron."  They  have  all  a  higher 
worth  than  their  insulated  sententious  import  bespeaks.  A  third 
characteristic  is  this,  that  Shakspeare's  observation  was  preceded 
by  contemplation.  "  He  first  conceived  what  the  forms  of  things 
must  be,  and  then  went  humbly  to  the  oracle  of  nature  to  ask 
whether  he  was  right.  He  inquired  of  her  as  a  sovereign  :  he 
did  not  gossip  with  her.  Shakspeare  describes  feelings  which  no 
observation  could  teach.  Shakspeare  made  himself  all  charac- 
ters—he left  out  parts  of  himself  and  supplied  what  might  have 
been  in  himself— nothing  was  given  him  but  the  canvass. 
('  This  fact  does  honor  to  human  nature,  for  it  shows  that  the 
seeds  of  all  that  is  noble  and  good  are  in  man  :  they  require  only 
to  be  developed.")  This  canvass  which  Shakspeare  used,  formed 
his  stories.  The  absurdity  of  his  tales  has  often  been  a  reproach 
to  Shakspeare  from  those  who  did  not  comprehend  him,  as  John- 


226  EXTRACTS   OF   LETTERS   FROM    MR.    ROBINSON. 

son,  Pope,  &c.  But  Shakspeare  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  prob- 
ability of  the  histories.  It  was  enough  for  him  that  they  had 
found  their  way  among  the  people.  Every  body  admitted  them 
to  be  true,  though  childish  in  the  extreme.  There  was  once 
upon  a  time  a  king  who  had  three  daughters,  and  he  said  to 
them,  "  tell  me  how  you  love  me,  and  I  will  give  my  kingdom  to 
her  that  loves  me  best."  And  so  one  daughter  said,  &c.  &c 
From  such  stuff  as  this  Shakspeare  has  produced  the  most  won 
derful  work  of  human  genius,  as  in  Othello  he  produced  the  most 
perfeet  work.  ':  In  the  three  first  acts  he  carried  human  feelings 
to  the  utmost  height,  therefore  in  the  two  following  they  seem  to 
sink  and  become  feeble  :  as,  after  the  bursting  of  the  storm,  \v 
behold  the  scattered  clouds  dispersed  over  the  heavens." 

Coleridge's  digressions  are  not  the  worst  parts  of  his  lectures,  01 
rather,  he  is  always  digressing.  He  quoted  Mrs.  Barbauld  under 
the  appellation  of  "an  amiable  lady,"  who  had  asked  how  Rich 
ardson  was  inferior  to  Shakspeare?  Richardson,  he  allowed, 
evinces  an  exquisite  perception  of  minute  feeling,  but  there  is  a 
want  of  harmony,  a  vulgarity  in  his  sentiment ;  he  is  only  inter-" 
esting.  Shakspeare  on  the  contrary  elevates  and  instructs.  In- 
stead of  referring  to  our  ordinary  situations  and  common  feelings 
he  emancipates  us  from  them,  and  when  most  remote  from  ordi- 
nary life  is  most  interesting.  I  should  observe,  this  depreciation 
of  the  interesting  in  poetry  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  fea- 
tures of  the  new  German  criticism.  It  is  always  opposed  by 
Schiller  to  the  beautiful,  and  is  considered  as  a  very  subordinate 
merit  indeed.  Hence  the  severity  of  the  attacks  on  Kotzebue, 
who  certainly  is  more  interesting  to  nineteen  out  of  twenty  than 
Shakspeare.  C.  took  occasion,  on  mentioning  Richardson  to  ex- 
press his  opinions  of  the  immorality  of  his  novels.  The  lower 
passions  of  our  nature  are  kept  through  seven  or  eight  volumes, 
in  a  hot-bed  of  interest.  Fielding's  is  far  less  pernicious  ;  "  for 
the  gusts  of  laughter  drive  away  sensuality." 

P.S.  Coleridge  called  Voltaire  "  a  petty  scribbler."  I  oppose 
to  this  common-place,  in  which  aversion  is  compounded  with  con- 
tempt, Goethe's  profound  and  cutting  remark :  "It  has  been 
found  that  certain  monarchs  unite  all  ths  talents  and  powers  of 
their  race.  It  was  thus  with  Louis  XIV.  :  and  it  is  so  with  au 
thors.     In  this  sense  it  may  be  said  that  Voltaire  is  the  greatest 


PROSPECTUS   OF   LECTURES   IN   1811.  .  227 

of  all  conceivable  Frenchmen."  I  abhor  Bonaparte  as  the  gates 
of  hell,  yet  I  smile  at  the  drivellers  who  cry  out  c'est  un  bon  ca~ 
voral.     Damn  'em  both  if  you  will,  but  don't  despise  them. 


PROSPECTUS  OF  LECTURES  IN"  1811. 

LONDON    PHILOSOPHICAL    SOCIETY,    SCOTS    CORPORATION   HALL, 
CRANE    COURT,  FLEET    STREET. 

Mr.  Coleridge    will  commence    on   Monday,  Nov.  18th,  a 
Course  of  Lectures  on  Shakspeare  and  Milton,  in  Illustration  of 
the  principles  of  Poetry,  and  their  Application  as  grounds  of  crit 
icism  to  the  most  popular  works  of  later  English  Poets,  those  of 
the  Living  included. 

After  an  introductory  Lecture  on  false  criticism  (especially  in 
Poetry),  and  on  its  causes  :  two  thirds  of  the  remaining  course 
will  be  assigned,  1st,  to  a  philosophical  analysis  and  explanation 
of  all  the  principal  characters  of  our  great  Dramatist,  as  Othello, 
■staff,  Richard  III.,  Iago,  Hamlet,  &c.  :  and  2d,  to  a  critical 
comparison  of  Shakspeare,  in  respect  of  Diction,  Imagery,  Man- 
agement of  the  Passions,  Judgment  in  the  construction  of  his 
Dramas,  in  short  of  all  that  belongs  to  him  as  a  Poet,  and  as  a 
dramatic  Poet,  with  his  contemporaries,  or  immediate  successors, 
Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Ford,  Massinger,  &c,  in  the 
endeavor  to  determine  what  of  Shakspeare's  merits  and  defects 
are  common  to  him  with  other  writers  of  the  same  age,  and  what 
remain  peculiar  to  his  own  Genius. 

The  course  will  extend  to  fifteen  Lectures,  which  will  be  given 
on  Monday  and  Thursday  evenings  successively.  The  Lectures  to 
commence  at  half-past  seven  o'clock. 


A   COURSE    OF   LECTURES 


PROSPECTUS. 

There  are  few  families,  at  present,  in  the  higher  and  middle- 
classes  of  English  society,  in  which  literary  topics  and  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  Fine  Arts,  in  some  one  or  other  of  their  various 
forms,  do  not  occasionally  take  their  turn  in  contributing  to  the 
entertainment  of  the  social  board,  and  the  amusement  of  the 
circle  at  the  fire-side.  The  acquisitions  and  attainments  of  the 
intellect  ought,  indeed,  to  hold  a  very  inferior  rank  in  our  esti- 
mation, opposed  to  moral  worth,  or  even  to  professional  and 
specific  skill,  prudence,  and  industry.  But  why  should  they  be 
opposed,  when  they  may  be  made  subservient  merely  by  being 
subordinated  ?  It  can  rarely  happen,  that  a  man  of  social  dis- 
position, altogether  a  stranger  to  subjects  of  taste  (almost  the 
only  ones  on  which  persons  of  both  sexes  can  converse  with  a 
common  interest),  should  pass  through  the  world  without  at  times 
feeling  dissatisfied  with  himself.  '  The  best  proof  of  this  is  to  be 
found  in  the  marked  anxiety  which  men,  who  have  succeeded  in 
life  without  the  aid  of  these  accomplishments,  show  in  securing 
them  to  their  children.  A  young  man  of  ingenuous  mind  will 
not  wilfully  deprive  himself  of  any  species  of  respect.  He  will 
wish  to  feel  himself  on  a  level  with  the  average  of  the  society 
:n  which  he  lives,  though  he  may  be  ambitious  of  distinguishing 
himself  only  in  his  own  immediate  pursuit  or  occupation. 

Under  this  conviction,  the  following  Course  of  Lectures  was 
planned.  The  several  titles  will  best  explain  the  particular  sub- 
jects and  purposes  of  each  :  but  the  main  objects  proposed,  as 
the  result  of  a1!,  are  the  two  following  : 


230  PROSPECTUS  OF  A 

1.  To  convey,  in  a  form  best  fitted  to  render  them  impressive 
at  the  time,  and  remembered  afterwards,  rules  and  principles  of 
sound  judgment,  with  a  kind  and  degree  of  connected  informa- 
tion, such  as  the  hearers  can  not  generally  be  supposed  likely  to 
form,  collect,  and  arrange  for  themselves  by  their  own  unassisted 
studies.  It  might  be  presumption  to  say,  that  any  important 
part  of  these  Lectures  could  not  be  derived  from  books  ;  but 
none,  I  trust,  in  supposing,  that  the  same  information  could  not 
be  so  surely  or  conveniently  acquired  from  such  books  as  are  of 
commonest  occurrence,  or  with  that  quantity  of  time  and  atten- 
tion which  can  be  reasonably  expected,  or  even  wisely  desired, 
of  men  engaged  in  business  and  the  active  duties  of  the  world. 

2.  Under  a  strong  persuasion  that  little  of  real  value  is  de- 
rived by  persons  in  general  from  a  wide  and  various  reading  ; 
but  still  more  deeply  convinced  as  to  the  actual  mischief  of  un- 
connected and  promiscuous  reading,  and  that  it  is  sure,  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  to  enervate  even  where  it  does  not  like- 
wise innate  ;  I  hope  to  satisfy  many  an  ingenuous  mind,  serious- 
ly interested  in  its  own  development  and  cultivation,  how  mod- 
erate a  number  of  volumes,  if  only  they  be  judiciously  chosen, 
will  suffice  for  the  attainment  of  every  wise  and  desirable  pur- 
pose ;  that  is,  in  addition  to  those  which  he  studies  for  specific 
and  professional  purposes.  It  is  saying  less  than  the  truth  to 
affirm,  that  an  excellent  book  (and  the  remark  holds  almost 
equally  good  of  a  Raphael  as  of  a  Milton)  is  like  a  well-chosen 
and  well-tended  fruit-tree.  Its  fruits  are  not  of  one  season  only. 
With  the  due  and  natural  intervals,  we  may  recur  to  it  year 
after  year,  and  it  will  supply  the  same  nourishment  and  the  same 
gratification,  if  only  we  ourselves  return  to  it  with  the  same 
healthful  appetite. 

The  subjects  of  the  Lectures  are  indeed  very  different,  but  not 
(in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term)  diverse  ;  they  are  various,  rather 
than  miscellaneous.  There  is  this  bond  of  connection  common 
to  them  all, — that  the  mental  pleasure  which  they  are  calculated 
to  excite,  is  not  dependent  on  accidents  of  fashion,  place,  or 
age,  or  the  events  or  the  customs  of  the  day ;  but  commensurate 
with  the  good  sense,  taste,  and  feeling,  to  the  cultivation  of 
which  they  themselves  so  largely  contribute,  as  being  all  in  kind, 
though  not  all  in  the  same  degree,  productions  of  genius. 

What  it  would  be  arrogant  to  promise,  I  may  yet  be  permitted 


COURSE    OF   LECTURES.  231 

to  hope, — that  the  execution  will  prove  correspondent  and  ade- 
quate to  the  plan.  Assuredly,  my  best  efforts  have  not  been 
wanting  so  to  select  and  prepare  the  materials,  that,  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  Lectures,  an  attentive  auditor,  who  should  consent 
to  aid  his  future  recollection  by  a  few  notes  taken  either  during 
each  Lecture,  or  soon  after,  would  rarely  feel  himself,  for  the 
time  to  come,  excluded  from  taking  an  intelligent  interest  in  any 
genera]  conversation  likely  to  occur  in  mixed  society. 

SYLLABUS  OF  THE  COURSE. 

I.  January  27,  1818. — On  the  manners,  morals,  literature, 
philosophy,  religion,  and  the  state  of  society  in  general,  in  Euro- 
pean Christendom,  from  the  eighth  to  the  fifteenth  century  (that 
is,  from  A.D.  700,  to  A.D.  1400),  more  particularly  in  reference 
to  England,  France,  Italy,  and  Germany  ;  in  other  words,  a  por- 
trait of  the  so-called  dark  ages  of  Europe. 

II.  January  30. — On  the  tales  and  metrical  romances  com- 
mon, for  the  most  part,  to  England,  Germany,  and  the  north  of 
France,  and  on  the  English  songs  and  ballads,  continued  to  the 
reign  of  Charles  I.  A  few  selections  will  be  made  from  the 
Swedish,  Danish,  and  German  languages,  translated  for  the  pur- 
pose by  the  Lecturer. 

III.  Februarys. — Chaucer  and  Spenser  ;  of  Petrarch;  ofAri- 
osto,  Pulei,  and  Boiardo. 

IV.  Y.  VI.  February  6,  10,  13.— On  the  dramatic  works  of 
Shakspeare.  In  these  Lectures  will  be  comprised  the  substance 
of  Mr.  Coleridge's  former  courses  on  the  same  subject,  enlarged 
and  varied  by  subsequent  study  and  reflection. 

VII.  February  17,— On  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
and  Massinger  ;  with  the  probable  causes  of  the  cessation  of 
dramatic  poetry  in  England  with  Shirley  and  Otway,  soon  after 
the  restoration  of  Charles  II.    . 

VIII.  February  20.— Of  the  life  and  all  the  works  of  Cervan- 
tes, but  chiefly  of  his  Don  Quixote.'  The  ridicule  of  knight  er- 
rantry shown  to  have  been  but  a  secondary  object  in  the  mind 
pf  the  author,  and  not  the  principal  cause  of  the  delight  which 
|the  work  continues  to  give  to  all  nations,  and  under  all  the  revo- 

utions  of  manners  and  opinions. 

IX.  February  24.— On  Rabelais,  Swift,  and  Sterne  :    on  the 


232  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

nature  and  constituents  of  genuine  Humor,  and  on  the  distinc« 
tions  of  the  Humorous  from  the  Witty,  the  Fanciful,  the  Droll, 
and  the  Old. 

X.  February  27. — Of  Donne,  Dante,  and  Milton. 

XL  March  3. — On  the  Arabian  Nights'  Entertainments,  and 
on  the  romantic  use  of  the  supernatural  in  poetry,  and  in  works 
of  fiction  not  poetical.  On  the  conditions  and  regulations  under 
which  such  books  may  be  employed  advantageously  in  the  earlier 
periods  of  education. 

XII.  March  6. — On  tales  of  witches,  apparitions,  &c.  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  magic  and  magicians  of  Asiatic  origin.  The 
probable  sources  of  the  former,  and  of  the  belief  in  them  in  cer- 
tain ages  and  classes  of  men.  Criteria  by  which  mistaken  and 
exaggerated  facts  may  be  distinguished  from  absolute  falsehood 
and  imposture.  Lastly,  the  causes  of  the  terror  and  interest 
which  stories  of  ghosts  and  witches  inspire,  in  early  life  at  least, 
whether  believed  or  not. 

XIII.  March  10. — On  color,  sound,  and  form,  in  Nature,  as 
connected  with  poesy  :  the  word  "Poesy"  used  as  the  generic  or 
class  term,  including  poetry,  music,  painting,  statuary,  and  ideal 
architecture,  as  its  species.  The  reciprocal  relations  of  poetry 
and  philosophy  to  each  other  ;  and  of  both  to  religion,  and  the 
moral  sense. 

XIV.  March  13. — On  the  corruptions  of  the  English  language 
since  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  in  our  style  of  writing  prose.  A 
few  easy  rules  for  the  attainment  of  a  manly,  unaffected,  and 
pure  language,  in  our  genuine  mother  tongue,  whether  for  the 
purpose  of  writing,  oratoiy,  or  conversation. 


LECTURE  I* 

GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  THE  GOTHIC  MIND  IN  THE  MIDDLE  AGES. 

Mr.  Coleridge  began  by  treating  of  the  races  of  mankind  as 

descended  from  Shem,  Ham,  and  Japhet,  and  therein  of  the  early 

condition  of  man  in  his   antique  form.     He  then  dwelt  on  the 

*  From  Mr.  Green's  note  taken  at  the  delivery. — Ed. 


! 


LECTURE   I.  233 

pre-eminence  of  the  Greeks  in  Art  and  Philosophy,  and  noticed 
the  suitableness  of  polytheism  to  small,  insulated  states,  in  which 
patriotism  acted  as  a  substitute  for  religion,  in  destroying  or  sus- 
pending self.  Afterwards,  in  consequence  of  the  extension  of  the 
Roman  empire,  some  universal  or  common  spirit  became  neces- 
sary for  the  conservation  of  the  vast  body,  and  this  common  spirit 
was,  in  fact,  produced  in  Christianity.  The  causes  of  the  decline 
of  the  Roman  empire  were  in  operation  long  before  the  time  of 
the  actual  overthrow  ;  that  overthrow-  had  been  foreseen  by  many 
eminent  Romans,  especially  by  Seneca.  In  fact,  there  was  under 
the  empire  an  Italian  and  a  German  party  in  Rome,  and  in  the 
end  the  latter  prevailed. 

He  then  proceeded  to  describe  the  generic  character  of  the 
Northern  nations,  and  defined  it  as  an  independence  of  the  whole 
in  the  freedom  of  the  individual,  noticing  their  respect  for  women, 
and  their  consequent  chivalrous  spirit  in  war  ;  and  how  evidently 
the  participation  in  the  general  council  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
representative  form  of  government,  the  only  rational  mode  of  pre- 
serving individual  liberty  in  opposition  to  the  licentious  democracy 
of  the  ancient  republics. 

He  called  our  attention  to  the  peculiarity  of  their  art,  and 
showed  how  it  entirely  depended  on  a  symbolical  expression  of 
the  infinite, — which  is  not  vastness,  nor  immensity,  nor  perfec- 
tion, but  whatever  can  not  be  circumscribed  within  the  limits  of 
actual,  sensuous  being.  In  the  ancient  art,  on  the  contrary,  every 
thing  was  finite  and  material.  Accordingly,  sculpture  was  not 
attempted  by  the  Gothic  races  till  the  ancient  specimens  were 
discovered,  whilst  painting  and  architecture  were  of  native 
growth  amongst  them.  In  the  earliest  specimens  of  the  paint- 
ings of  modern  ages,  as  in  those  of  Giotto  and  his  associates  in 
the  cemetery  at  Pisa,  this  complexity,  variety,  and  symbolical 
character  are  evident,  and  are  more  fully  developed  in  the 
mightier  works  of  Michel  Angelo  and  Rafiael.  The  contem- 
plation of  the  works  of  antique  art  excites  a  feeling  of  elevated 
beauty,  and  exalted  notions  of  the  human  self;  but  the  Gothic 
architecture  impresses  the  beholder  with  a  sense  of  self-annihila- 
tion ;  he  becomes,  as  it  were,  a  part  of  the  work  contemplated. 
A.n  endless  complexity  and  variety  are  united  into  one  whole,  the 
plan  of  which  is  not  distinct  from   the  execution.     A  Gothic 


234  COURSE    OF   LECTURES. 

cathedral  is  the  petrifaction  of  our  religion.  The  only  work  of 
truly  modern  sculpture  is  the  Moses  of  Michael  Angelo. 

The  Northern  nations  were  prepared  by  their  own  previous  re- 
ligion for  Christianity  ;  they,  for  the  most  part,  received  it  gladly, 
and  it  took  root  as  in  a  native  soil.  The  deference  to  woman, 
characteristic  of  the  Gothic  races,  combined  itself  with  devotion 
in  the  idea  of  the  Virgin  Mother,  and  gave  rise  to  many  beauti- 
ful associations.^ 

Mr.  C.  remarked  how  Gothic  an  instrument  in  origin  and 
character  the  organ  was. 

He  also  enlarged  on  the  influence  of  female  character  on  our 
education,  the  first  impressions  of  our  childhood  being  derived 
from  women.  Amongst  oriental  nations,  he  said,  the  only 
distinction  was  between  lord  and  slave.  With  the  antique 
Greeks,  the  will  of  every  one  conflicting  with  the  will  of  all,  pro- 
duced licentiousness ;  with  the  modern  descendants  from  the 
northern  stocks,  both  these  extremes  were  shut  out,  to  reappear 
mixed  and  condensed  into  this  principle  or  temper  ; — submission, 
but  with  free  choice,  illustrated  in  chivalrous  devotion  to  women 
as  such,  in  attachment  to  the  sovereign,  &c. 


LECTURE    II.+ 

GENERAL    CHARACTER   OF    THE    GOTHIC    LITERATURE    AND   ART. 

In  my  last  lecture  I  stated  that  the  descendants  of  Japhet  and 
Shem  peopled  Europe  and  Asia,  fulfilling  in  their  distribution 
the  prophecies  of  Scripture,  while  the  descendants  of  Ham  passed 
into  Africa,  there  also  actually  verifying  the  interdiction  pro- 
nounced against  them.  The  Keltic  and  Teutonic  nations  occupied 
that  part  of  Europe,  which  is  now  France,  Britain,  Germany, 
Sweden,  Denmark,  &c.     They  were  in  general  a  hardy  race, 

*  The  reader  may  compare  the  last  two  paragraphs  with  the  first  of 
Schlegel's  Prelections  on  Dramatic  Art  and  Literature — Vol.  i.  pp.  10-16, 
2d.  edit. — and  -with  Schelling  Ueber  das  Verhaltniss  der  bildenden  Kunste^ 
p.  377 ;  though  the  resemblance  in  thought  is  but  general. 

f  From  Mr.  William  Hammond's  note  taken  at  +he  delivery. — Ed. 


I 


LECTURE   II.  235 

possessing  great  fortitude,  and  capable  of  great  -ndurance.     The 
Romans  slowly  conquered  the  more   southerly  portion   of  their 
tribes,  and  succeeded  only  by  their  superior  arts,  their  policy,  and 
better  discipline.     After  a  time,  when   the  Goths,— to  use  the 
name  of  the  noblest  and  most  historical  of  the  Teutonic  tribes,— 
had  acquired  some  knowledge  of  these  arts  from  mixing  with 
their  conquerors,  they  invaded  the  Roman  territories.     The  hardy 
habits,  the  steady  perseverance,  the  better  faith  of  the  enduring 
Goth  rendered  him  too  formidable  an  enemy  for  the  corrupt  Ro- 
man, who  was  more  inclined  to  purchase  the  subjection  of  his 
enemy,  than  to  go  through  the   suffering  necessary  to  secure  it. 
The  conquest  of  the  Romans  gave  to  the  Goths  the  Christian  re- 
ligion as  it  was  then  existing  in  Italy ;  and  the  light  and  grace- 
ful building  of  Grecian,  or  Roman-Greek  order,  became  singularly 
combined  with  the  massy  architecture  of  the  Goths,  as  wild  and 
varied  as  the  forest  vegetation  which  it  resembled.     The  Greek 
art  is  beautiful.     When   I    enter   a  Greek  Church,  my   eye   is 
charmed,  and  my  mind  elated  ;  I  feel  exalted,  and  proud  that  I 
am   a   man.     But  the   Gothic  art  is  sublime.     On  entering  a 
cathedral,  I  am  filled  with  devotion  and  with  awe  ;  I  am  los't  to 
the  actualities  that  surround   me,  and  my  whole  being  expands 
into  the  infinite  ;  earth  and  air,  nature  and  art,  all  swell  up  into 
eternity,  and  the  only  sensible  impression  left,  is  '  that  I  am  noth- 
ing !'     This  religion,  while  it  tended  to  soften  the  manners  of  the 
Northern  tribes,  was  at  the  same  time  highly  congenial  to  their 
nature.     The   Goths   are  free    from  the   stain  of 'hero-worship. 
Gazing  on  their  rugged  mountains,  surrounded  by  impassable  for- 
ests, accustomed  to  gloomy  seasons,  they  lived  in  the  bosom  of 
nature,  and  worshipped  an  invisible  and  unknown  deity.     Firm  in 
his  faith,  domestic  in  his  habits,  the  life  of  the  Goth  was  simple 
and  dignified,  yet  tender  and  affectionate. 

The  Greeks  were  remarkable  for  complacency  and  completion  ; 
they  delighted  in  whatever  pleased  the  eye  ;  to  them  it  was  not 
enough  to  have  merely  the  idea  of  a  divinity,  they  must  have  it 
placed  before  them,  shaped  in  the  most  perfect  symmetry,  and 
presented  with  the  nicest  judgment :  and  if  we  look  upon  any 
feeek  production  of  art,  the  beauty  of  its  parts,  and  the  har- 
mony of  their  union,  the  complete  and  complacent  effect  of  the 
whole,  are  the  striking  characteristics.  It  is  the  same  in  their 
■tiy.     In  Homer  you  have  a  poem  perfect  in  its  form,  whether 


236  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

originally  so,  or  from  the  labor  of  after-critics,  I  know  not  ,  his 
descriptions  are  pictures  brought  vividly  before  you,  and  as  far  as 
the  eye  and  understanding  are  concerned,  I  am  indeed  gratified. 
But  if  I  wish  my  feelings  to  be  affected,  if  I  wish  my  heart  to  be 
touched,  if  I  wish  to  melt  into  sentiment  and  tenderness,  I  must 
turn  to  the  heroic  songs  of  the  Goths,  to  the  poetry  of  the  middle 
ages.  The  worship  of  statues  in  Greece  had,  in  a  civil  sense,  its 
advantage,  and  disadvantage  ;  advantage,  in  promoting  statuary 
and  the  arts ;  disadvantage,  in  bringing  their  gods  too  much  on 
a  level  with  human  beings,  and  thence  depriving  them  of  their 
dignity,  and  gradually  giving  rise  to  skepticism  and  ridicule.  But 
no°  statue,  no  artificial  emblem,  could  satisfy  the  Northman's 
mind ;  the  dark,  wild  imagery  of  nature  which  surrounded  him, 
and  the  freedom  of  his  life,  gave  his  mind  a  tendency  to  the  in- 
finite, so  that  he  found  rest  in  that  which  presented  no  end,  and 
derived  satisfaction  from  that  which  was  indistinct. 

We  have  few  and  uncertain  vestiges  of  Gothic  literature  till 
the  time  of  Theodoric,  who  encouraged  his  subjects  to  write,  and 
who  made  a  collection  of  their  poems.     These  consisted  chiefly 
of  heroic  songs,  sung  at  the  Court ;  for  at  that  time  this  was  the 
custom.     Charlemagne,  in  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century, 
greatly  encouraged  letters,  and  made  a  further  collection  of  the 
poems  of  his  time,  among  which  were  several  epic  poems  of 
great  merit ;  or  rather  in  strictness  there  was  a  vast  cycle  of 
heroic  poems,  or  minstrelsies,,  from  and  out  of  which  separate 
poems  were  composed.     The  form  of  poetry  was;  however,  for 
the  most  part,  the  metrical  romance  and  heroic  tale.      Charle- 
magne's army,  or  a  large  division  of  it,  was  utterly  destroyed  in 
the  Pyrenees,   when  returning  from  a  successful  attack  on  the 
Arabs  of  Navarre  and  Arragon ;  yet  the  name  of  Roncesvalles 
became  famous  in  the  songs  of  the  Gothic  poets.     The  Greeks 
and  Romans  would  not  have  done  this  ;  they  would  not  have  re- 
corded in  heroic  verse  the  death  and  defeat  of  their  fellow-coun- 
trymen.    But  the  Goths,  firm  in  their  faith,  with  a  constancy 
not  to  be  shaken,  celebrated  those  brave  men  who  died  for  their 
religion  and  their  country  !     What,  though  they  had  been  de- 
feated, they  died  without  fear,  as  they  had  lived  without  reproach; 
tV^y  left  no  stain  on  their  names,  for  they  fell  fighting  for  their  God, 
their  liberty,  and  their  rights  ;   and  the  song  that  sang  that  dayfl 
reverse  animated  them  to  future  victory  and  certain  vengeance. 


1 


LECTUEE   II.  23" 

I  must  now  turn  to  our  great  monarch,  Alfred,  one  of  the  most 
august  characters  that  any  age  has  ever  produced  ;  and  when  I 
picture  him  after  the  toils  of  government  and  the  dangers  of  bat- 
tle, seated  by  a  solitary  lamp,  translating  the  holy  scriptures  into 
the  Saxon  tongue,— when  I  reflect  on  his  moderation  in  success 
on  his  fortitude  and  perseverance  in  difficulty  and  defeat,  and  on 
the  wisdom  and  extensive  nature  of  his  legislation,  I  am  really  at 
a  loss  which  part  of  this  great  man's  character  most  to  admire, 
let  above  all,  I  see  the  grandeur,  the  freedom,  the  mildness   the 
domestic  unity,  the  universal  character  of  the  middle  ages  con- 
densed into  Alfred's  glorious  institution  of  the  trial  by  jury      I 
gaze  upon  it  as  the  immortal  symbol  of  that  age  ;— an  age  called 
indeed  dark  ;  but  how  could  that  age  be  considered  dark,  which 
solved  the  difficult  problem  of  universal  liberty,  freed  man  from 
the  shackles  of  tyranny,  and  subjected  his  actions  to  the  decision 
ot  twelve  of  his  fellow-countrymen  ?      The  liberty  of  the  Greeks 
was  a  phenomenon,  a  meteor,  which  blazed  for  a  short  time,  and 
then  sank  into  eternal  darkness.     It  was  a  combination  of  most 
opposite   materials,  slavery  and  liberty.      Such   can  neither  be 
happy  nor  lasting.     The  Goths  on  the  other  hand  said,  You  shall 
be  our  Emperor ;  but  we  must  be  Princes  on  our  own  estates,  and 
over  them  you  shall  have  no  power!     The  Vassals  said  to  their 
Fnnce,  ^Ve  will  serve  you  in  your  wars,  and  defend  your  castle  ; 
but  we  must  have  liberty  in  our  own  circle,  our  cottage,  our  cattle 
3ur  proportion  of  land.     The  Cities  said,  We  acknowledge  you  for 
>ur  Emperor;  but  we  must  have  our  walls  and  our  strongholds 
md  be  governed  by  our  own  laws.      Thus  all  combined,  yet  all 
*ere  separate  ;  all  served,  yet  all  were  free.     Such  a  government 
>ould  not  exist  m  a  dark  age.     Our  ancestors  may  not  indeed  have 
>een  deep  in  the  metaphysics  of  the  schools  ;  they  may  not  have 
hone  in  the  fine  arts ;  but  much  knowledge  of  human  nature 
nuch  practical  wisdom  must  have  existed  amongst  them,  when 
his  admirable  constitution  was  formed ;  and  I  believe  it  is  a  de- 
ided  truth,  though  certainly  an  awful  lesson,  that  nations  are  not 
ie  most  happy  at  the  time  when  literature  and  the  arts  flourish 
ie  most  among  them. 
The  translations  I  had  promised  in  my  syllabus  I  shall  defer  to 
ie  end  of  the  course,  when  I  shall  give  a  single  lecture  of  reci- 
ttions  illustrative  of  the  different  ages  of  poetry.     There  is  one 
ortnern  tale  I  will  relate,  as  it  is  one  from  which  Shakspeaw 


238  COURSE    OF   LECTURES. 

derived  that  strongly  marked  and  extraordinary  scene  between 
Richard  III.  and  the  Lady  Anne.  It  may  not  be  equal  to  that  in 
strength  and  genius,  but  it  is,  undoubtedly,  superior  in  decorum 

and  delicacy. 

A  Kni-ht  had  slain  a  Prince,  the  lord  of  a  strong  castle,  in 
combat      He  afterwards  contrived  to  get  into  the  castle,  where 
he  obtained  an  interview  with  the  Princess's  attendant  whose 
life  he  had  saved  in  some  encounter  ;  he  told  her  of  his  love  lor 
her  mistress,  and  won  her  to  his  interest.     She  then  slowly  and 
gradually  worked  on  her  mistress's  mind,  spoke  of  the  beauty  ot 
his  person,  the  fire  of  his  eyes,  the  sweetness  of  his  voice,  his 
valor  in  the  field,  his  gentleness  in  the  court ;  in  short,  by  watch- 
in*  her  opportunities,  she  at  last  filled  the  Princess's  soul  with 
this  one  image  ;  she  became  restless  ;  sleep  forsook  her ;  her  cu- 
riosity to  see  this  Knight  became  strong  ;  but  her  maid  still  de- 
ferred the  interview,  till  at  length  she  confessed  she  was  in  love 
with  him  ;—the  Knight  is  then  introduced,  and  the  nuptials  are 
quickly  celebrated. 

In  this  age  there  was  a  tendency  in  writers  to  the  droll  ana 

the  grotesque,  and  in  the  little  dramas  which  at  that  time  ex- 

isted  there  were  singular  instances  of  these.     It  was  the  disease 

of  the  ao-e      It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  Luther  and  Melancthon, 

the  great  religious  reformers  of  that  day,  should  have  strongly 

recommended,  for  the  education  of  children,  dramas,  which  at 

present  would  be  considered  highly  indecorous,  if  not  bordering 

on  a  deeper  sin.    From  one  which  they  particularly  recommended, 

I  will  give  a  few  extracts ;  more  I  should  not  think  it  right  to 

do      The  play  opens  with  Adam  and  Eve  washing  and  dressing 

their  children  to  appear  before  the  Lord,  who  is  coming  from 

heaven  to  hear  them  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer,  Belief,  &c.     In 

the  next  scene  the  Lord  appears  seated  like  a  schoolmaster,  with 

the  children  standing  round,  when  Cain,  who  is  behind  hand,  and 

a  «ad  pickle,  comes  running  in  with  a  bloody  nose  and  his  hat  on. 

Adam  says,  "What,  with  your  hat  on!"   Cain  then  goes  up  to 

shake  hands  with  the  Almighty,  when  Adam  says  (giving  hima 

cuff)   "Ah,  would  you  give  your  left  hand  to  the  Lord  .       Ai 

length  Cain  takes  his  place  in  the  class,  and  it  becomes  his  tun 

to  s°ay  the  Lord's  Prayer.     At  this  time  the  Devil  (a  constant  at 

tendant  at  that  time)  makes  his  appearance,  and  getting  behuu 

Cain,  whispers  in  his  ear  ;  instead  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  Can 


LECTURE  III. 


gives  it  so  changed  by  the  transposition  of  the  words,  that  the 
meaning  is  reversed  ;  yet  this  is  so  artfully  done  by  the  author 
that  it  is  exactly  as  an  obstinate  child  would  answer,  who  know* 
his  lesson,  yet  does  not  choose  to  say  it.  In  the  last  scene,  horses 
in  rich  trappings  and  carriages  covered  with  gold  are  introduced 
and  the  good  children  are  to  ride  in  them  and  be  Lord  Mayors' 
Lords,  &c. ;  Cain  and  the  bad  ones  are  to  be  made  cobblers  and 
tinkers,  and  only  to  associate  with  such. 

This,  with  numberless  others,  was  written  by  Hans  Sachs. 
Our  simple  ancestors,  firm  in  their  faith,  and  pure  in  their  morals 
were  only  amused  by  these  pleasantries,  as  they  seemed  to  them' 
and  neither  they  nor  the  reformers  feared  their  having  any  in- 
fluence hostile  to  religion.     When  I  was  many  years  back  in  the 
north  of  Germany,  there  were  several  innocent  superstitions  in 
practice      Among  others,  at  Christmas  presents  nsed  to  be  given 
to  the  chfidren  by  the  parents,   and  they  were   delivered    on 
Christmas-day  by  a  person  who  personated,  and  was  supposed 
by  the  children  to  be,  Christ :  early  on  Christmas  morning  he 
called,  knocking  loudly  at  the  door,  and  (having  received  his 
instructions)  left  presents  for  the  good  and  a  rod  for  the  bad 
Those  who  have  since  been  in  Germany  have  found  this  cus- 
tom relinquished  ;  it  was  considered  profane  and  irrational      Yet 
they  haye  not  found  the  children  better,  nor  the  mothers  more 
careful  of  their  offspring;  they  have  not  found  their  devotion 
more  fervent,  their  faith   more  strong,  nor  their  morality  more 
pure.*  J 


LECTURE  III. 

THETKOUEADpUHS-BOCCACCIO-PETEAECH-PULCI-CHAUCEn- 

SPENSER. 

ioririrJr^T  T   ali°tted  t0   an  in^gation  into  th, 

!of  lv\     T,     "r    CT  °f  a  SpeCi6S  °f  P°etr^  the  least  M«<™ed 
|  any  by  the  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome,-that  in  which 

KMeriL'1"8  ^r  °f„Knecht  EuP«-t  more  minutely  described  in  Mr 
fridges  own  letter  from  Germany,  published  in  The  Friend,  II. p. £f 


240  COURSE  OF   LECTURES. 

the  portion  contributed  by  the  Gethie  conquerors  the  preuilee. 
ions  and  general  tone  or  hahit  of  thought  and  feeling  brought 
by  our  remote  ancestors  with  them  from  the  forests  of  Germany 
or  tie  deep  dells  and  rocky  mountains  of  Norway  are  the  most 
prominent      In  the  present  Lecture  I  must  introduce  you  to  a 
CL  of  poetry,  which  had  its  hirth-place  near  the  centre  of 
Roma n  glory,  and  in  which,  as  might  be  anfopated,  the  ulna- 
rs of  the  Greek  and  Roman  muse  are  far  more  conspicuous, 
-as  great,  indeed,  as  the  efTorts  of  intentional  imitation  on  the 
part  of  Z  poets  themselves  could  render  them      But  happdy 
fa  J  and  for  their  own  fame,  the  intention  of  the  wnters  as 
Sen  is  often  at  complete  variance  with  the  gemus  of  the  sam 
men   as  poets      To  the   force  of  their  internum  we  owe  their 
m  ■  hoi  J£  ornaments,   and  the  greater   definiteness   of  their 
££?;  and  their  passion  for  the  beautiful,  the  voluptuous  an 
he  "artificial,  we  must  in  part  attribute  to  the™— , 
but  in  part  likewise  to  their  natural   dispositions   and  tastes 
For  Lime  climate  and  many  of  the  same  encums Unce, >  w « 
actin-  on  them,  which  had  acted  on  the  great  classic,  *hom 
tl   y  were  endeavoring  to  imitate.     But  the  love  of  the  marvej. 
Ions  the  deeper  sensibility,  the  higher  reverence  for  womanhood, 
the  characteristic  spirit  of  sentiment  and  courtesy^ these  were 
h     heirlooms  of  nature,  which   still  fegamed   the   ascendant 
whenever  the  use  of  the  living  mother-language  enabled  the 
inspired  poet  to  appear  instead  of  the  toilsome  scholar. 

From  this  same  union,  in  which  the  sonl  (if  I  may  daie  so 
express  myself )  was  Gothic,  while   the   outward  ta»J» 
majority  of  the  words  themselves,  were  the  reliques  of  the  Bo 
man,   arose  the  Romance,  or  romantic  language,  in  which  the. 
Troubadours  or  Love-singers  of  Provence  sang  and  wrote,  and: 
the  different  dialects  of  which  have  been  modified  into  the  mod- , 
en  Italian,   Spanish,  and  Portuguese  ;  whfie  the  language  o 
the  Trouvenrs,  Tronveres,  or  Norman-French  poets    forms    h 
intermediate  link  between  the  Romance  or  modified  Bom*,   and, 
the  Teutonic,  including  the  Dutch,  Danish,  Swed.sh,  and  the  upper, 
and  lower  German,  as  being  the  modified  Gothic^     And  as  h 
northernmost  extreme  of  the  Norman-French,  or  that  part  of  the 
link  in  which  it  formed  on  the  Teutonic,  we  must  take  the  Nor- 
man-English minstrels  and  metrical  romances,  from  the  greater 
predominance  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Gothic  in  the  derivation  ol 


LECTUKE   III.  241 

the  words.     I  mean,  that  the  language  of  the  English  metrical 
romance  is  less  romanized,  and  has  fewer  words,  not  originally 
of  a  northern  origin,  than  the  same  romances  in  the  Norman- 
French  ;  which  is  the  more  striking,  because  the  former  were  for 
the  most  part  translated  from  the  latter  ;  the  authors  of  which 
seem  to  have  eminently  merited  their  name  of  Trouveres,  or  in- 
ventors.    Thus  then  we  have  a  chain  with  two  rings  or  staples  : 
—at  the  southern  end  there  is  the  Roman,  or  Latin ;    at  the 
northern  end  the  Keltic,  Teutonic,  or  Gothic  ;  and  the  links  be- 
ginning  with  the  southern  end,  are  the  Romance,  including  the 
Provencal,  the  Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese,  with  their  dif- 
ferent dialects,  then  the  Norman-French,  and  lastly  the  English 
^  My  object  in  adverting  to  the  Italian  poets,  is  not  so  much 
for  their  own  sakes,  in  which  point  of  view  Dante  and  Ariosto 
alone  would  have  required  separate  Lectures,  but  for  the  elucida- 
tion of  the  merits  of  our  countrymen,  as  to  what  extent  we  must 
consider  them  as  fortunate  imitators  of  their  Italian  predecessors, 
and  in  what  points  they  have  the  higher  claims  of  original  ge- 
nius.    Of  Dante,  I  am  to  speak  elsewhere.     Of  Boccaccio,  who 
has  little  interest  as  a  metrical  poet  in  any  respect,  and  none  for 
my  present  purpose,  except,  perhaps,  as  the  reputed  inventor  or 
introducer  of  the  octave  stanza  in  his  Teseide,  it  will  be  sufficient 
to  say,  that  we   owe  to  him  the  subjects  of  numerous   poems 
taken  from  his  famous  tales,  the  happy  art  of  narration,  and  the 
still  greater  merit  of  a  depth  and  fineness  in  the  workings  of  the 
passions,  in  which  last  excellence,  as  likewise  in  the  wild  and 
imaginative  character  of  the  situations,  his  almost  neglected  ro- 
mances appear  to  me  greatly  to  excel  his  far-famed  Decameron. 
To  him,  too,  we  owe  the  more  doubtful  merit  of  having  intro- 
luced  into  the  Italian  prose,  and  by  the  authority  of  his  name 
bid  the  influence  of  his  example,  more  or  less  throughout  Eu- 
rope, the  long  interwoven  periods,  and  architectural  structure 
^hich  arose  from  the  very  nature  of  their  language  in  the  Greek 
knters,  but  which  already  in  the  Latin  orators  and  historians, 
iad  betrayed  a  species  of  effort,  a  foreign  something,  which  had 
een  superinduced  on  the  language,  instead  of  growing  out  of 
t ;  and  which  was  far  too  alien  from  that  individualizing  and 
onfederating,  yet  not  blending,   character  of  the  North,  to  be- 
ome  permanent,  although  its  magnificence  and  statelmess  were 
Ejects  of  admiration  and  occasional  imitation.      This  style  di- 
vol.  iv.  Xj 


242  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

minished  the  control  of  the  writer  over  the  inner  feelings  of 
men,  and  created  too  great  a  chasm  between  the  body  and  the 
life  ;  and  hence  especially  it  was  abandoned  by  Luther. 

But  lastly,  to  Boccaccio's  sanction  we  must  trace  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  mythological  pedantry  and  incongruous  paganisms, 
which  for  so  long  a  period  deformed  the  poetry,  even  of  the  truest 
poets      To   such   an  extravagance  did  Boccaccio  himself  carry 
this  folly,  that  in  a  romance  of  chivalry  he  has  uniformly  styled 
God  the  Father  Jupiter,  our  Saviour  Apollo,  and  the  Evil  Being 
Pluto      But  for  this    there  might  be  some  excuse  pleaded.     I 
dare  make  none  for  the  gross  and  disgusting  licentiousness,  the 
daring  profaneness,  which  rendered  the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio 
the  parent  of  a  hundred  worse  children,  fit  to  be  classed  among 
the   enemies  of  the  human  race  ;  which  poisons  Ariosto— (for 
that  I  may  not  speak  oftener  than  necessary  of  so  odious  a  sub- 
ject I  mention  it  here  once  for  all)— which  interposes  a  painful 
mixture  in  the  humor  of  Chaucer,  and  which  has  once  or  twice 
seduced  even  our  pure-minded  Spenser  into  a  grossness,  as  hete- 
rogeneous from  the  spirit  of  his  great  poem,  as  it  was  alien  to 
the  delicacy  of  his  morals. 


PETRARCH. 

Born  at  Arezzo,  1304.— Died  1374. 

Petrarch  was  the  final  blossom  and  perfection  of  the  Trouba- 
dours. 

NOTES  ON  PETRARCH'S*  SONNETS,  CANZONES,  <fco. 

VOL.  I. 


Sonnet.  1.  Voi,  eh'  ascoltate,  <fec. 
7.  La  gola,  e  '1  sonno,  &c. 

11.  Se  la  mia  vita,  &c. 

12.  Quando  fra  l'altre,  &c. 


*  These  notes,  by  Mr.  C,  are  written  in  a  Petrarch  in  my  possession, 
and  are  of  some  date  before  1812.  It  is  hoped  that  they  will  not  seem  lU 
placed  here. — Ed. 


LECTUKE   III.  243 

18.  Vergognando  talor,  &c. 
25.  Quanto  piu  m'  avvicino,  &<\ 

28.  Solo  e  pensoso,  &c. 

29.  S'  io  credessi,  &o. 
Canz.  14.  Si  e  debile  il  filo,  <fec. 

PLEASING. 

Ball.  1.  Lassare  il  velo,  &c. 
Canz.  1.  Nel  dolce  tempo,  &o. 

This  poem  was  imitated  by  our  old  Herbert;*  it  is  ridiculous  in 
the  thoughts,  but  simple  and  sweet  in  diction. 

DIGNIFIED. 

Canz.  2.  O  aspettata  in  ciel,  <fcc. 
9.  Gentil  mia  Donna,  &c. 

The  first  half  of  this  ninth  canzone  is  exquisite;  and  in  canzone 
8,  the  nine  lines  beginning 

O  poggi,  O  valli,  (fee. 

to  cura,  are  expressed  with  vigor  and  chastity. 

Canz.  9.  Daquel  di  innanzi  a  me  medesmo  piacqui 
Empiendo  d'un  pensier'  alto,  e  soave 
Quel  core,  ond'  hanno  i  begli  occhi  la  chiave. 

Note.—O  that  the  Pope  avouM  take  these  eternal  keys,  which 
so  forever  turn  the  bolts  on  the  finest  passages  of  true  passion  ' 


VOL.  H. 
Canz.  1.  Che  debb'  io  far  ?  <fcc. 
^ery  good;  but  not  equal,  I  think,  to  Canzone  2, 

Amor,  se  vuoi  ch'  i'  torni,  &c. 

fiough  less  faulty.  With  the  omission  of  half-a-dozen  conceifs 
nd  letrarchisms  of  hooks,  baits,  flames,  and  torches,  this  second 
anzone  is  a  bold  and  impassioned  lyric,  and  leaves  no  doubt  in 
iy  mmd  of  Petrarch's  having  possessed  a  true  poetic  genos. 
Itinam  deleri  possint  sequentia  ; 

*  If  George  Herbert  is  meant,  I  can  find  nothing  lice  an  imitation  of  this 
^nzone  in  his  poems.— Ed. 


244  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

L,  17 — 19. e  la  soave  fiamma 

Ch'  ancor,  lasso !  m'  infiamma 

Essendo  spenta,  or  che  fea  dunque  ardendo  I 

X,,  54 — 56. ov'  erano  a-tutt'  ore 

Disposti  gli  ami  ov'  io  fui  preso,  e  l'esca 
Ch'  i'  bramo  sempre. 

L  76 — 79.  . .  onde  1'  accese 

Saette  uscivan  d'  invisibil  foco, 

E  ragion  teraean  poco 

Che  contra  '1  ciel  non  val  difesa  umana. 

And  the  lines  86,  87. 

Poser'  in  dubbio,  a  eui 

Devesse  il  pregio  di  piu  laudc  darsi — 

are  rather  flatly  worded. 


LUIGI  P3LCL 
Born  at  Florence,  1431.— Died  about  1487. 

Pulci  was  of  one  of  the  noblest  families  in  Florence,  reported 
to  be  one  of  the  Frankish  stocks  which  remained  in  that  city  after 
the  departure  of  Charlemagne  : — 

Pulcia  Gallorum  soboles  descendit  in  urbem, 
Clara  quidem  bello,  sacris  nee  inhospita  Musis. 

Verino  de  illustrat.  Cork  Flor.  ii.  v.  IIS. 

Members  of  this  family  were  five  times  elected  to  the  Pnorate, 
one  of  the  highest  honors  of  the  republic.  Pulci  had  two  brothers, 
and  one  of  their  wives,  Antonia,  who  were  all  poets : — 


Carminibus  patriis  notissima  Pulcia  proles ; 
Quis  non  hanc  urbem  Musarum  dicat  amicam, 
Si  tres  producat  fratres  domus  una  poetas  % 

lb.  ii.  v.  241. 


I 


Luigi  married  Lucrezia  di  Uberto,  of  the  Albizzi  family,  and 
was  intimate  with  the  great  men  of  his  time,  but  more  especially 
with  Angelo  Politian,  and  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent.  His  Mor- 
gante  has  been  attributed,  in  part  at  least,*  to  the  assistance  of 
Marsilius  Ficinus,  and  by  others  the  whole  has  been  attributed 
to  Politian.     The  first  conjecture  is  utterly  improbable;  the  lasl 


*  Meaning  the  25th  canto. — Ed. 


LECTURE   III.  245 

I  is  possible,  indeed,  on  account  of  the  licentiousness  of  the  poem ' 
but  there  are  no  direct  grounds  for  believing  it.  The  Morgante 
Maggiore  is  the  first  proper  romance;  although,  perhaps,  Pulci 
had  the  Teseide  before  him.  The  story  is  taken  from  the  fabu- 
lous history  of  Turpin ;  and  if  the  author  had  any  distinct  object 
it  seems  to  have  been  that  of  making  himself  merry  with  the 
absurdities  of  the  old  romancers.  The  Morgante  sometimes 
makes  you  think  of  Rabelais.  It  contains  the  most  remarkable 
guess  or  allusion  upon  the  subject  of  America  that  can  be  found 
in  any  book  published  before  the  discovery .#  The  well-known 
passage  in  the  tragic  Seneca  is  not  to  be  compared  with  it  The 
copia  verborum  of  the  mother  Florentine  tongue,  and  the  easiness 

*  The  reference  is,  of  course,  to  the  following  stanzas  :— 

Disse  Astarotte :  un  error  lungo  e  fioco 
Per  molti  secol  non  ben  conosciuto, 
Fa  che  si  dice  d'  Ercol  le  colonne, 
E  che  piu  la  molti  periti  sonne. 
Sappi  che  questa  opinione  e  vana ; 
Perche  piu  oltre  navicar  si  puote, 
Pero  che  1'  acqua  in  ogni  parte  e  piana, 
Benche  la  terra  abbi  forma  di  ruote : 
Era  piu  grossa  allor  la  gente  humana; 
Talche  potrebbe  arrosirne  le  gote 
Ercule  ancor  d'  aver  posti  que'  segni, 
Perche  piu  oltre  passeranno  i  legni. 
E  puossi  andar  giu  ne  1'  altro  emisperio, 
Pero  che  al  centro  ogni  cosa  reprime ; 
Si  che  la  terra  per  divin  misterio 
Sospesa  sta  fra  le  stelle  sublime, 
E  la  giu  son  citta,  castella,  e  imperio ; 
Ma  no]  cognobbon  quelle  genti  prime  : 
Vedi  che  il  sol  di  camminar  s'  affretta, 
Dove  io  ti  dico  che  la  giu  s'  aspetta. 
E  come  un  segno  surge  in  Oriente, 
Un  altro  cade  con  mirabil  arte, 
Come  si  vede  qua  ne  1'  Occidente, 
Pero  che  il  ciel  giustamente  comparte ; 
Antipodi  appellata  e  quella  gente ; 
Adora  il  sole  e  Jupiterre  e  Marte,' 
E  piante  e  animal  come  voi  hanno, 
E  spesso  insieme  gran  battaglie  fanno. 

C.  xxv.  st.  228,  <fcc. 
TW  Morgante  waS  printed  in  im.-M.    Another  very  enrion9  nntici 


246  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

of  his  styls,  afterwards  brought  to  perfection  by  Berni,  are  the 
chief  merits  of  Pulci ;  his  chief  demerit  is  his  heartless  spirit  of 
jest  and  buffoonery,  by  which  sovereigns  and  their  courtiers  were 
nattered  by  the  degradation  of  nature,  and  the  i??ipossibilificatio?i 
of  a  pretended  virtue. 

CHAUCER. 
Born  in  London,  1328.— Died  1400* 

Chaucer  must  be  read  with  an  eye  to  the  Norman-French 
Trouveres,  of  whom  he  is  the  best  representative  in  English.  He 
had  great  powers  of  invention.  As  in  Shakspeare,  his  characters 
represent  classes,  but  in  a  different  manner  ;  Shakspeare's  char- 
acters are  the  representatives  of  the  interior  nature  of  humanity, 
in  which  some  element  has  become  so  predominant  as  to  destroy 
the  health  of  the  mind ;  whereas  Chaucer's  are  rather  represen- 
tatives of  classes  of  manners.  He  is  therefore  more  led  to  indi- 
vidualize in  a  mere  personal  sense.  Observe  Chaucer's  love  of, 
nature ;  and  how  happily  the  subject  of  his  main  work  is  chosen. 
When  you  reflect  that  the  company  in  the  Decameron  have 
retired  to  a  place  of  safety,  from  the  raging  of  a  pestilence,  their 
mirth  provokes  a  sense  of  their  unfeelingness ;  whereas  in  Chau- 
cer nothing  of  this  sort  occurs,  and  the  scheme  of  a  party  on  a 
pilgrimage,  with  different  ends  and  occupations,  aptly  allows  of 
the  greatest  variety  of  expression  in  the  tales. 

SPENSER. 

Born  in  London,  1553.— Died  1599. 

There  is  this  difference,  among  many  others,  betwen  Shak- 
speare and  Spenser : — Shakspeare  is  never  colored  by  the  cus- 
toms of  his  age  ;  what  appears  of  contemporary  character  in  him 

pation,  said  to  have  been  first  noticed  by  Amerigo  Vespucci,  occurs  in 
Dante's  Purgatorio : 

1  mi  volsi  a  man  destra  e  posi  mente 
All  'altro  polo:  e  vidi  quattro  stelle 
Non  viste  mai,  fuor  ch'  alia  prima  gente. 

C  1. 1.  22-4. 
*  From  Mr.  Green's  note. — Ed. 


LECTUEE   III.  247 

is  merely  negative;  it  is  just  not  something-  else.  He  has  none 
of  the  fictitious  realities  of  the  classics,  none  of  the  grotesquenesses 
of  chivalry,  none  of  the  allegory  of  the  middle  ages  ;  there  is  no 
sectarianism  either  of  politics  or  religion,  no  miser,  no  witch, — no 
common  witch, — no  astrology — nothing  impermanent  of  however 
long  duration ;  but  he  stands  like  the  yew-tree  in  Lorton  vale, 
which  has  known  so  many  ages  that  it  belongs  to  none  in  partic- 
ular ;  a  living  image  of  endless  self- reproduction,  like  the  immor- 
tal tree  of  Malabar.  In  Spenser  the  spirit  of  chivalry  is  entirely 
predominant,  although  with  a  much  greater  infusion  of  the  poet's, 
own  individual  self  into  it  than  is  found  in  any  other  writer.  He 
has  the  wit  of  the  southern  with  the  deeper  inwardness  of  the 
northern  genius. 

No  one  can  appreciate  Spenser  without  some  reflection  on  the 
nature  of  allegorical  writing.  The  mere  etymological  meaning 
of  the  word,  allegory, — to  talk  of  one  thing  and  thereby  convey 
another, — is  too  wide.  The  true  sense  is  this, — the  employment 
of  one  set  of  agents  and  images  to  convey  in  disguise  a  moral 
meaning,  with  a  likeness  to  the  imagination,  but  with  a  differ- 
ence to  the  understanding, — those  agents  and  images  being  s«> 
combined  as  to  form  a  homogeneous  whole.  This  distinguishes  it 
from  metaphor,  which  is  part  of  an  allegory.  But  allegory  is  not 
properly  distinguishable  from  fable,  otherwise  than  as  the  first  in- 
cludes the  second,  as  a  genus  its  species  ;  for  in  a  fable  there  must 
be  nothing  but  what  is  universally  known  and  acknowledged,  but 
in  an  allegory  there  may  be  that  which  is  new  and  not  previously 
admitted.  The  pictures  of  the  great  masters,  especially  of  the 
Italian  schools,  are  genuine  allegories.  Amongst  the  classics,  the 
multitude  of  their  gods  either  precluded  allegory  altogether,  or 
else  made  every  thing  allegory,  as  in  the  Hesiodic  Theogonia  ;  for 
you  can  scarcely  distinguish  between  power  and  the  personifica- 
tion of  power.  The  Cupid  and  Psyche  of,  or  found  in,  Apuleius, 
is  a  phenomenon.  It  is  the  Platonic  mode  of  accounting  for  the 
fall  of  man.  The  Battle  of  the  Soul*  by  Prudentius  is  an  early 
iustance  of  Christian  allegory. 

Narrative  allegory  is  distinguished  from  mythology  as  reality 
from  symbol  ;  it  is,  in  short,  the  proper  intermedium  between 
person  and  personification.     Where  it  is  too  strongly  individual- 
ized, it  ceases  to  be  allegory  ;  this  is  often  felt  in  the  Pilgrim's 
*  Psycliomaehia. — Ed. 


248  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

Progress,  where  the  characters  are  real  persons  with  nick- 
names. Perhaps  one  of  the  most  curious  warnings  against 
another  attempt  at  narrative  allegory  on  a  great  scale,  may  be 
found  in  Tasso's  account  of  what  he  himself  intended  in  and  by 
his  Jerusalem  Delivered. 

As  characteristic  of  Spenser,  I  would  call  your  particular  atten- 
tion in  the  first  place  to  the  indescribable  sweetness  and  fluent 
projection  of  his  verse,  very  clearly  distinguishable  from  the  deep- 
er and  more  interwoven  harmonies  of  Shakspeart  and  Milton. 
This  stanza  is  a  good  instance  of  what  I  mean  : — 

Yet  she,  most  faithfull  ladie,  all  this  -while 

Forsaken,  wofull,  solitarie  mayd, 

Far  from  all  peoples  preace,  as  in  exile, 

In  wildernesse  and  wastfull  deserts  strayd 

To  seeke  her  knight ;  who,  subtily  betrayd 

Through  that  late  vision  which  th'  enchaunter  -wrought, 

Had  her  abandond;  she,  of  nought  afFrayd, 

Through  -woods  and  wastnes  wide  him  daily  sought, 

Yet  wished  tydinges  none  of  him  unto  her  brought. 

F.  Qu.  B.  i.  c.  3,  st.  3. 

2.  Combined  with  this  sweetness  and  fluency,  the  scientific 
construction  of  the  metre  of  the  Faery  dueene  is  very  noticeable. 
One  of  Spenser's  arts  is  that  of  alliteration,  and  he  uses  it  with 
great  effect  in  doubling  the  impression  of  an  image  : — 

In  wildernesse  and  wastful  deserts — 

Through  woods  and  wastnes  wilde, — 

They  passe  the  bitter  waves  of  Acheron, 

Where  many  soules  sit  wailing  woefully, 

And  come  to  Jlevj  Jlood  of  PMegeton, 

Whereas  the  damned  ghosts  in  torments  fry, 

And  with  sharp  shrilling  shrieks  doth  bootlesse  cry, — <fec. 

He  is  particularly  given  to  an  alternate  alliteration,  which  is, 
perhaps,  when  well  used,  a  great  secret  in  melody  : — 

A  ramping  lyon  rushed  suddenly, — 
*  And  sad  to  see  her  sorrowful  constraint, — 
And  on  the  grasse  her  cfaintie  Zimbes  c?id  Zay, — &o. 

You  can  not  read  a  page  of  the  Faery  Q,ueene,  if  you  read  for  that 
purpose,  without  perceiving  the  intentional  alliterativeness  of  the 
words  ;   and  yet  so  skilfully  is  this  managed,  that  it  never  strike* 


LECTURE   III.  249 

any  unwarned  ear  as  artificial,  or  other  than  the  result  of  the 
necessary  movement  of  the  verse. 

3.  Spenser  displays  great  skill  in  harmonizing  his  descriptions 
of  external  nature  and  actual  incidents  with  the  allegorical  char- 
acter and  epic  activity  of  the  poem.  Take  these  two  beautiful 
as  illustrations  of  what  I  mean  : — 

By  this  the  northerne  wagoner  had  set 

His  sevenfol  teme  behind  the  stedfast  starre 

That  was  in  ocean  waves  yet  never  wet, 

But  firme  is  fixt,  and  sendeth  light  from  farre 

To  all  that  in  the  wide  deepe  wandring  arre  ; 

And  chearefull  chaunticlere  with  his  note  shrill 

Had  warned  once,  that  Phoebus'  fiery  carre 

In  hast  was  climbing  up  the  easterne  hill, 

Full  envious  that  Night  so  long  his  roome  did  fill ; 

When  those  accursed  messengers  of  hell, 

That  feigning  dreame,  and  that  faire-forged  spright 

Came,  &c.     B.  i.  c.  2,  st.  1. 

At  last,  the  golden  orientall  gate 

Of  greatest  Heaven  gan  to  open  fayre  ; 

And  Phcebus,  fresh  as  brydegrome  to  his  mate, 

Came  dauncing  forth,  shaking  his  deawie  hayre  ; 

And  hurld  his  glistring  beams  through  gloomy  ayre. 

Which  when  the  wakeful  Elfe  perceiv'd,  streightway 

He  started  up,  and  did  him  selfe  prepayre 

In  sunbright  armes  and  batitailons  array  ; 

For  with  that  Pagan  proud  he  combat  will  that  day. 

lb.  c.  5,  st.  2. 

Observe  also  the  exceeding  vividness  of  Spenser's  descriptions. 
They  are  not,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  picturesque  ;  but 
are  composed  of  a  wondrous  series  of  images,  as  in  our  dreams. 
Compare  the  following  passage  with  any  thing  you  may  remem- 
ber in  pari  materia  in  Milton  or  Shakspeare  : — 

His  haughtie  helmet,  horrid  all  with  gold, 
Both  glorious  brightnesse  and  great  terrour  bredd ; 
For  all  the  crest  a  dragon  did  enfold 
With  greedie  pawes,  and  over  all  did  spredd 
His  golden  winges;  his  dreadfull  hideous  hedd, 
Close  couched  on  the  bever,  seemd  to  throw 
From  flaming  mouth  bright  sparkles  fiery  redd, 
That  suddeine  horrour  to  faint  hartes  did  show ; 
And  scaly  tayle  was  etretcht  adowne  his  back  full  low. 
L* 


250  COUKSE  OF  LECTUKES. 

Upon  the  iop  of  all  his  loftie  crest 

A  bounch  of  haires  discolourd  diversly, 

"With  sprinkled  pearle  and  gold  full  richly  drest, 

Did  shake,  and  seemd  to  daunce  for  jollitie  ; 

Like  to  an  almond  tree  yrnounted  hye 

On  top  of  greene  Selinis  all  alone. 

"With  blossoms  brave  bedecked  daintily, 

Whose  tender  locks  do  tremble  every  one 

At  everie  little  breath  that  under  heaven  is  blowne. 

lb.  c.  1,  at.  31-2. 

4.  You  will  take  especial  note  of  the  marvellous  independence 
and  true  imaginative  absence  of  all  particular  space  or  time  in 
the  Faery  Glueene.  It  is  in  the  domains  neither  of  history  or 
geography  ;  it  is  ignorant  of  all  artificial  boundary,  all  material 
obstacles  ;  it  is  truly  in  land  of  Faery,  that  is,  of  mental  space. 
The  poet  has  placed  you  in  a  dream,  a  charmed  sleep,  and  you 
neither  wish,  nor  have  the  power,  to  inquire  where  you  are,  or 
how  you  got  there.     It  reminds  me  of  some  lines  of  my  own  : — 

Oh  !  would  to  Alia ! 
The  raven  or  the  sea-mew  were  appointed 
To  bring  me  food  ! — or  rather  that  my  soul 
Might  draw  in  life  from  the  universal  air  ! 
It  were  a  lot  divine  in  some  small  skiff 
Along  some  ocean's  boundless  solitude 
To  float  forever  with  a  careless  course 
And  think  myself  the  only  being  alive  ! 

Remorse,  Act  iv.  sc.  3. 

Indeed  Spenser  himself,  in  the  conduct  of  his  great  poem,  may  be 
represented  under  the  same  image,  his  symbolizing  purpose  being 
his  mariner's  compass  : — 

As  pilot  well  expert  in  perilous  wave, 
That  to  a  stedfast  starre  his  course  hath  bent, 
When  foggy  niistes  or  cloudy  tempests  have 
The  faithfull  light  of  that  faire  lampe  yblent, 
And  coverd  Heaven  with  hideous  dreriment ; 
Upon  his  card  and  compas  firmes  his  eye, 
The  maysters  of  his  long  experiment, 
And  to  them  does  the  steddy  helme  apply, 
Bidding  his  winged  vessell  fairely  forward  fly. 

B.  ti.  c  *7,  at.  1. 
So  the  poet  through  the  realms  of  allegory. 

5.  You  should  note  the  quintessential  character  of  Christian 


LECTUEE  III.  251 

chivalry  in  all  his  characters,  but  more  especially  in  his  women 
The  Greeks,  except,  perhaps,  in  Homer,  seem  to  have  had  no 
way  of  making  their  women  interesting,  but  by  unsexing  them, 
as  in  the  instances  of  the  tragic  Medea,  Electra,  &c.  Contrast 
such  characters  with  Spenser's  Una,  who  exhibits  no  prominent 
feature,  has  no  particularization,  but  produces  the  same  feeling 
that  a  statue  does,  when  contemplated  at  a  distance  : 

From  her  fayre  head  her  fillet  she  undight, 

And  layd  her  stole  aside :  her  angels  face, 

As  the  great  eye  of  Heaven,  shyned  bright, 

And  made  a  sunshine  in  the  shady  place ; 

Did  never  mortal  eye  behold  such  heavenly  grace. 

B.  i.  c.  3,  st.  4. 
6.  In  Spenser  we  see  the  brightest  and  purest  form  of  that 
nationality  which  was  so  common  a  characteristic  of  our  elder 
poets.  There  is  nothing  unamiable,  nothing  contemptuous  of 
others,  in  it.  To  glorify  their  country— to  elevate  England  into 
a  queen,  an  empress  of  the  heart— this  was  their  passion  and  ob- 
ject ;  and  how  dear  and  important  an  object  it  was  or  may  be, 
let  Spain,  in  the  recollection  of  her  Cid,  declare  !  There  is  a 
great  magic  in  national  names.  What  a  damper  to  all  interest 
is  a  list  of  native  East  Indian  merchants  !  Unknown  names  are 
non-conductors  ;  they  stop  all  sympathy.  No  one  of  our  poets 
has  touched  this  string  more  exquisitely  than  Spenser ;  especially 
in  his  chronicle  of  the  British  Kings  (B.  ii.  c.  10),  and  the  mar- 
riage of  the  Thames  with  the  Medway  (B.  iv.  c.  11),  in  both 
which  passages  the  mere  names  constitute  half  the  pleasure  we 
receive.^  To  the  same  feeling  we  must  in  particular  attribute 
Spenser's  sweet  reference  to  Ireland  : — 

ISTe  thence  the  Irishe  rivers  absent  were ; 

Sith  no  lesse  famous  than  the  rest  they  be,  &q.     lb. 

**  *  *  *  *  *         * 

And  Mulla  mine,  whose  waves  I  whilom  taught  to  weep. 

lb. 

And  there  is  a  beautiful  passage  of  the  same  sort  in  the  Colin 
Hlout's  Come  Home  Again  : — 

"  One  day,"  quoth  he,  "  I  sat,  as  was  my  trade, 
Under  the  foot  of  Mole,"  &e. 

Lastly,  the  great  and  prevailing  character  of  Spenser's  mind  is- 


252  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

fancy  under  the  conditions  of  imagination,  as  an  ever-present  but 
not  always  active  power.  He  has  an  imaginative  fancy,  but  he 
has  not  imagination,  in  kind  or  degree,  as  Shakspeare  and  Milton 
have  ;  the  boldest  effort  of  his  powers  in  this  way  is  the  charac- 
ter of  Talus.*  Add  to  this  a  feminine  tenderness  and  almost 
maidenly  purity  of  feeling,  and  above  all,  a  deep  moral  earnest- 
ness which  produces  a  believing  sympathy  and  acquiescence  in 
the  reader,  and  you  have  a  tolerably  adequate  view  of  Spenser's 
intellectual  being. 


LECTURE  VII. 


BEN   JONSON,    BEAUMONT   AND    FLETCHER,    AND    MASSINGER 

A  contemporary  is  rather  an  ambiguous  term,  when  applied 
to  authors.  It  may  simply  mean  that  one  man  lived  and  wrote 
while  another  was  yet  alive,  however  deeply  the  former  may 
have  been  indebted  to  the  latter  as  his  model.  There  have  been 
instances  in  the  literary  world  that  might  remind  a  botanist  of  a 
singular  sort  of  parasite  plant,  which  rises  above  ground,  indepen- 
dent and  unsupported,  an  apparent  original ;  but  trace  its  roots, 
and  you  will  find  the  fibres  all  terminating  in  the  root  of  another 
plant  at  an  unsuspected  distance,  which,  perhaps,  from  want  of 
sun  and  genial  soil,  and  the  loss  of  sap,  has  scarcely  been  able  to 
peep  above  the  ground. — Or  the  word  may  mean  those  whose 
compositions  were  contemporaneous  in  such  a  sense  as  to  preclude 
all  likelihood  of  the  one  having  borrowed  from  the  other.  In  the 
latter  sense,  I  should  call  Ben  Jonson  a  contemporary  of  Shak- 
speare, though  he  long  survived  him  ;  while  I  should  prefer  the 
phrase  of  immediate  successors  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
Massinger,  though  they  too  were  Shakspeare's  contemporaries  in 
the  former  sense. 

*  B.  5.  Legend  of  Artegall.— Ed. 


LECTURE  VII.  258 

BEN  JONSON  * 

Born,  IE  74.— Died,  1637. 

Ben  Jonson  is  original ;  he  is,  indeed,  the  only  one  of  the  great 
dramatists  of  that  day  who  was  not  either  directly  produced,  or 
very  greatly  modified,  by  Shakspeare.  In  truth,  he  differs  from 
pur  great  master  in  every  thing — in  form  and  in  substance — and 
betrays  no  tokens  of  his  proximity.  He  is  not  original  in  the 
same  way  as  Shakspeare  is  original ;  but  after  a  fashion  of  his 
own,  Ben  Jonson  is  most  truly  original. 

The  characters  in  his  plays  are,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the 
term,  abstractions.  Some  very  prominent  feature  is  taken  from 
the  whole  man,  and  that  single  feature  or  humor  is  made  the 
basis  upon  which  the  entire  character  is  built  up.  Ben  Jonson's 
dramatis  persona  are  almost  as  fixed  as  the  masks  of  the  an- 
cient actors  ;  you  know  from  the  first  scene — sometimes  from  the 
list  of  names — exactly  what  every  one  of  them  is  to  be.  He  was 
a  very  accurately  observing  man  ;  but  he  cared  only  to  observe 
what  was  external  or  open  to,  and  likely  to  impress,  the  senses. 
He  individualizes,  not  so  much,  if  at  all,  by  the  exhibition  of 
moral  or  intellectual  differences,  as  by  the  varieties  and  contrasts 
of  manners,  modes  of  speech  and  tricks  of  temper  ;  as  in  such 
characters  as  Puntarvolo,  Bobadill,  &c. 

I  believe  there  is  not  one  whim  or  affectation  in  common  life 
noted  in  any  memoir  of  that  age  which  may  not  be  found  drawn 
and  framed  in  some  corner  or  other  of  Ben  Jonson's  dramas  ;  and 
they  have  this  merit/in  common  with  Hogarth's  prints,  that  not 
a  single  circumstance  is  introduced  in  them  which  does  not  play 
upon,  and  help  to  bring  out,  the  dominant  humor  or  humors  of 
the  piece.  Indeed  I  ought  very  particularly  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  extraordinary  skill  shown  by  Ben  Jonson  in  contriving 
situations  for  the  display  of  his  characters.!  In  fact,  his  care  and 
anxiety  in  this  matter  led  him  to  do  what  scarcely  any  of  the 
dramatists  of  that  age  did — that  is,  invent  his  plots.  It  is  not 
a  first  perusal  that  suffices  for  the  full  perception  of  the  elaborate 
artifice  of  the  plots  of  the  Alchemist  and  the  Silent  Woman  ;— 

*  From  Mr.  Green's  note.— Ed. 

t  "  hi  Jonson's  comic  inventions,"  says  Schlegel  "  a  spirit  of  observation 
is  manifested  more  than  fancy." — Vol.  iv.  p.  93. 


254  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

that  :)f  the  former  is  absolute  perfection  for  a  necessary  entangle* 
ment,  and  an  unexpected,  yet  natural,  evolution. 

Ben  Jonson  exhibits  a  sterling  English  diction,  and  he  has  with 
great  skill  contrived  varieties  of  construction  ;  but  his  style  is 
rarely  sweet  or  harmonious,  in  consequence  of  his  labor  at  point 
and  strength  being  so  evident.  In  all  his  works,  in  verse  or 
prose,  there  is  an  extraordinary  opulence  of  thought ;  but  it  is  the 
produce  of  an  amassing  power  in  the  author,  and  not  of  a  growth 
from  within.  Indeed  a  large  proportion  of  Ben  Jonson's  thoughts 
may  be  traced  to  classic  or  obscure  modern  writers,  by  those  who 
are  learned  and  curious  enough  to  follow  the  steps  of  this  robust, 
surly  and  observing  dramatist. 


BEAUMONT.    Born,  1586.*— Died,  1615-16. 
FLETCHER.     Bora,  1579.— Died,  1625. 

Mr.  Weber,  to  whose  taste,  industry,  and  appropriate  erudition,' 
we  owe,  I  will  not  say  the  best  (for  that  would  be  saying  little), 
but  a  good,  edition  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  has  complimented 
the  Philaster,  which  he  himself  describes  as  inferior  to  the  Maid's 
Tragedy  by  the  same  writers,  as  but  little  below  the  noblest  of 
Shakspeare's  plays,  Lear,  Macbeth,  Othello,  &c,  and  consequently 
implying  the  equality,  at  least,  of  the  Maid's  Tragedy ; — and  an 
eminent  living  critic, — who  in  the  manly  wit,  strong  sterling 
sense,  and  robust  style  of  his  original  works,  had  presented  the 
best  possible  credentials  of  office,  as  charge  d'affaires  of  literature 
in  general, — and  who  by  his  edition  of  Massinger — a  work  in 
which  there  was  more  for  an  editor  to  do,  and  in  which  more  was 
actually  well  done,  than  in  any  similar  work  within  my  knowl- 
edge— has  proved  an  especial  right  of  authority  in  the  apprecia- 
tion of  dramatic  poetry,  and  hath  potentially  a  double  voice  with 
the  public  in  his  own  right  and  in  that  of  the  critical  synod, 
where,  as  princeps  se?iatus,  he  possesses  it  by  his  prerogative,— 
has  affirmed  that  Shakspeare's  superiority  to  his  contemporaries 

*  Mr.  Dyce  thinks  that  "  Beaumont's  birth  ought  to  be  fixed  at  a  some- 
what earlier  date,"  because,  in  the  Funeral  Certificate  on  the  decease  of  bis 
father,  dated  22d  April,  1598,  he  is  said  to  be  of  the  age  of  thirteen  years  or 
more ;  and  because  "  at  the  age  of  twelve,  4th  February,  1596-7,"  according 
to  Wood's  Ath.  Oxon,  "  he  was  admitted  a  gentleman-commoner  of  Broad* 
gates  Hall." 


LECTUEE  VII.  255 

rests  on  his  superior  wit  alone,  while  in  all  the  other,  and,  as  I 
shou]d  deem,  higher  excellencies  of  the  drama,  character,  pathos, 
depth  of  thought,  &c.  he  is  equalled  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
Ben  Jonson,  and  Massinger  !* 

Of  wit  I  am  engaged  to  treat  in  another  Lecture.  It  is  a  ge- 
nus of  many  species ;  and  at  present  I  shall  only  say,  that  the 
species  which  is  predominant  in  Shakspeare,  is  so  completely 
Shaksperian,  and  in  its  essence  so  interwoven  with  all  his  other 
characteristic  excellencies,  that  I  am  equally  incapable  of  com- 
prehending, both  how  it  can  be  detached  from  his  other  powers, 
and  how,  being  disparate  in  kind  from  the  wit  of  contemporary 
dramatists,  it  can  be  compared  with  theirs  in  degree.  And  again 
— the  detachment  and  the  practicability  of  the  comparison  being 
granted — I  should,  I  confess,  be  rather  inclined  to  concede  the 
contrary  ; — and  in  the  most  common  species  of  wit,  and  in  the  or- 
dinary application  of  the  term,  to  yield  this  particular  palm  to 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  whom  here  and  hereafter  I  take  as  one 
poet  with  two  names — leaving  undivided  what  a  rare  love  and 
still  rarer  congeniality  have  united.  At  least,  I  have  never  been 
able  to  distinguish  the  presence  of  Fletcher  during  the  life  of 
Beaumont,  nor  the  absence  of  Beaumont  during  the  survival  of 
Fletcher. 

But  waiving,  or  rather  deferring  this  question,  I  protest  against 
the  remainder  of  the  position  in  toto.  And  indeed,  whilst  I  can 
never,  I  trust,  show  myself  blind  to  the  various  merits  of  Jonson, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massinger,  or  insensible  to  the 
greatness  of  the  merits  which  they  possess  in  common,  or  to  the 
specific  excellencies  which  give  to  each  of  the  three  a  worth  of 
his  own — I  confess,  that  one  main  object  of  this  Lecture  was  to 
prove  that  Shakspeare's  eminence  is  his  own,  and  not  that  of  his 
age  ; — even  as  the  pine-apple,  the  melon,  and  the  gourd  may 
grow  on  the  same  bed ; — yea,  the  same  circumstances  of  warmth 
and  soil  may  be  necessary  to  their  full  development,  yet  do  not 
account  for  the  golden  hue,  the  ambrosial  flavor,  the  perfect  shape 
of  the.  pine-apple,  or  the  tufted  crown  on  its  head.  Would  that 
those,  who  seek  to  twist  it  off,  could  but  promise  us  in  this  in- 
stance to  make  it  the  germ  of  an  equal  successor  ! 

What  had  a  grammatical  and  logical  consistency  for  the  ear — 
what  could  be  put  together  and  represented  to  the  eye — these 
*  See  Mr.  Gifford's  introduction  to  his  edition  of  Massinger.— Ed 


256  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

poets  took  from  the  ear  and  eye.  unchecked  by  any  intuition  of  an 
inward  impossibility  ; — just  as  a  man  might  put  together  a  quar- 
ter of  an  orange,  a  quarter  of  an  apple,  and  the  like  of  a  lemon 
and  a  pomegranate,  and  make  it  look  like  one  round  diverse- 
colored  fruit.  But  nature,  which  works  from  within  by  evolution 
and  assimilation  according  to  a  law,  can  not  do  so,  nor  could 
Shakspeare  ;  for  he  too  worked  in  the  spirit  of  nature,  by  evolv- 
ing the  germ  from  within  by  the  imaginative  power  according  to 
an  idea.  For  as  the  power  of  seeing  is  to  light,  so  is  an  idea  in 
mind  to  a  law  in  nature.  They  are  correlatives,  which  suppose 
each  other. 

The  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  mere  aggregations 
without  unity  ;  in  the  Shaksperian  drama  there  is  a  vitality 
which  grows  and  evolves  itself  from  within — a  key-note  which 
guides  and  controls  the  harmonies  throughout.  "What  is  Lear  ? — 
It  is  storm  and  tempest — the  thunder  at  first  grumbling  in  the 
far  horizon,  then  gathering  around  us,  and  at  length  bursting  in 
fury  over  our  heads — succeeded  by  a  breaking  of  the  clouds  for  a 
while,  a  last  flash  of  lightning,  the  closing  in  of  night,  and  the 
single  hope  of  darkness  !  And  Romeo  and  Juliet  ? — It  is  a  spring 
day,  gusty  and  beautiful  in  the  morn,  and  closing  like  an  April 
evening  with  the  song  of  the  nightingale  ;* — whilst  Macbeth  is 
deep  and  earthy — composed  to  the  subterranean  music  of  a 
troubled  conscience,  which  converts  every  thing  into  the  wild  and 
fearful ! 

Doubtless  from  mere  observation,  or  from  the  occasional  simi- 
larity of  the  writer's  own  character,  more  or  less  in  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and  other  such  writers  will  happen  to  be  in  corres- 
pondence with  nature,  and  still  more  in  apparent  compatibility 
with  it.  But  yet  the  false  source  is  always  discoverable,  first  by 
the  gross  contradictions  to  nature  in  so  many  other  parts,  and 
secondly,  by  the  want  of  the  impression  which  Shakspeare  makes, 
that  the  thing  said  not  only  might  have  been  said,  but  that  noth- 
ing else  could  be  substituted,  so  as  to  excite  the  same  sense  of  its 
exquisite  propriety.  I  have  always  thought  the  conduct  and  ex- 
pressions of  Othello  and  Iago  in  the  last  scene,  when  Iago  is 

*  Was  der  Duft  eines  siidlichen  Friihlings  berauschendes,  der  Gesang 
der  Nachtigall  sehnsiichtiges,  das  erste  Auf  bluhung  der  Rose  wollustiges 
hat,  das  athmet  aus  diesem  Gedicht. — Schlegel's  Dram.  Vorlesvngen.  VoL 
id.  p.  107. 


LECTURE   VII.  257 

brought  in  prisoner  a  wonderful  instance  of  Shakspeare's  con- 
summate  judgment : — 

Oth.  I  look  down  towards  his  feet ; — but  that's  a  fable. 

If  that  thou  be'st  a  devil,  I  can  not  kill  thee. 
Iago.  I  bleed,  Sir  ;  but  not  kill'd. 
Oth.  I  am  not  sorry  neither. 

Think  what  a  volley  of  execrations  and  defiances  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  would  have  poured  forth  here  ! 

Indeed  Massinger  and  Ben  Jonson  are  both  more  perfect  in 
fheir  kind  than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  the  former  in  the  story 
and  affecting  incidents  ;  the  latter  in  the  exhibition  of  manners 
and  peculiarities,  whims  in  language,  and  vanities  of  appearance. 
There  is,  however,  a  diversity  of  the  most  dangerous  kind  here. 
Shakspeare  shaped  his  characters  out  of  the  nature  within  ;  but 
we  can  not  so  safely  say,  out  of  his  own  nature  as  an  individual 
person.  No  !  this  latter  is  itself  but  a  natura  naturata — an  ef- 
fect, a  product,  not  a  power.  It  was  Shakspeare's  prerogative 
to  have  the  universal,  which  is  potentially  in  each  particular, 
opened  out  to  him,  the  homo  generalis,  not  as  an  abstraction 
from  observation  of  a  variety  of  men,  but  as  the  substance  capa- 
ble cf  endless  modifications,  of  which  his  own  personal  existence 
was  but  one,  and  to  use  this  one  as  the  eye  that  beheld  the  other, 
ind  as  the  tongue  that  could  convey  the  discovery.  There  is  no 
greater  or  more  common  vice  in  dramatic  writers  than  to  draw 
)ut  of  themselves.     How  I — alone  and  in  the  self-sufficiency  of 

ny  study,  as   all  men  are  apt  to  be  proud  in   their  dreams 

should  like  to  be  talking  king  !  Shakspeare,  in  composing,  had 
10  i",  but  the  I  representative.  In  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  you 
Mive  descriptions  of  characters  by  the  poet  rather  than  the  char- 
acters themselves  :  we  are  told,  and  impressively  told,  of  their 
feing  ;  but  we  rarely  or  never  feel  that  they  actually  are. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  the  most  lyrical  of  our  dramatists. 

think  their  comedies  the  best  part  of  their  works,  although 
here  are  scenes  of  very  deep  tragic   interest  in  some   of  their 
lays.     I  particularly  recommend    Monsieur  Thomas    for    good  ■ 
ure  comic  humor. 

There  is,  occasionally,  considerable  license  in  their  dramas  ; 
ad  this  opens  a  subject  much  needing  vindication  and  sound  ex- 
Dsition,  but  which  is  beset  with  such  difficulties  for  a  Lecturer, 


258  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

that  I  must  pass  it  by.  Only  as  far  as  Shakspeare  is  concerned, 
I  own,  I  can  with  less  pain  admit  a  fault  in  him  than  beg  an 
excuse' for  it.  I  will  not,  therefore,  attempt  to  palliate  the  gross- 
ness  that  actually  exists  in  his  plays  by  the  customs  of  his  age, 
or  by  the  far  greater  coarseness  of  all  his  contemporaries,  except- 
ing Spenser,  who  is  himself  not  wholly  blameless,  though  nearly 
so  ;— for  I  place  Shakspeare's  merit  on  being  of  no  age.  But  1 
would  clear  away  what  is,  in  my  judgment,  not  his,  as  that  scene 
of  the  Porter*  in  Macbeth,  and  many  other  such  passages,  and 
abstract  what  is  coarse  in  manners  only,  and  all  that  which  from 
the  frequency  of  our  own  vices,  we  associate  with  his  words.  If 
this  were  truly  done,  little  that  could  be  justly  reprehensible 
would  remain.  Compare  the  vile  comments,  offensive  and  de- 
fensive, on  Pope's 

Lust  thro'  some  gentle  strainers,  &c. 

with  the  worst  thing  in  Shakspeare,  or  even  in  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  ;  and  then  consider  how  unfair  the  attack  is  on  our  old 
dramatists  ;  especially  because  it  is  an  attack  that  can  not  be 
properly  answered  in  that  presence  in  which  an  answer  would  be 
most  desirable,  from  the  painful  nature  of  one  part  of  the  posi- 
tion ;  but  this  very  pain  is  almost  a  demonstration  of  its  false- 
hood ! 

MASSINGER. 
Born  at  Salisbury,  1584— Died,  1640. 

With  regard  to  Massinger,  observe, 

1.  The  vein  of  satire  on  the  times  ;  but  this  is  not  as  in  Shaks- 
peare, where  the  natures  evolve  themselves  according  to  their 

ncidental  disproportions,  from  excess,  deficiency,  or  mislocation, 
f  one  or  more  of  the  component  elements  ;  but  is  merely  satire 
what  is  attributed  to  them  by  others. 

2.  His  excellent  metre— a  better  model  for  dramatists  in  gen- 
eral to  imitate  than  Shakspeare's,— even  if  a  dramatic  taste  ex- 
isted in  the  frequenters  of  the  stage,  and  could  be  gratified  in  the 
present  size  and  management,  or  rather  mismanagement,  of  the 
two  patent  theatres.  I  do  not  mean  that  Massinger's  verse  is 
Bupenor  to  Shakspeare's  or  equal  to  it.     Far  from  it;  but  it  n 

*  Act  ii.  sc.  3. 


inci 
o 

on 


LECTURE  VII.  259 

much  more  easily  constructed,  and  may  be  more  successfully 
adopted  by  writers  in  the  present  day.  It  is  the  nearest  approach 
to  the  language  of  real  life  at  all  compatible  with  a  fixed  metre. 
In  Massinger,  as  all  our  poets  before  Dryden,  in  order  to  make 
harmonious  verse  in  the  reading,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  that 
the  meaning  should  be  understood  ; — when  the  meaning  is  once 
seen,  then  the  harmony  is  perfect.  Whereas  in  Pope  and  in  most 
of  the  writers  who  followed  in  his  school,  it  is  the  mechanical 
metre  which  determines  the  sense. 

3.  The  impropriety,  and  indecorum  of  demeanor  in  his  favorite 
characters,  as  in  Bertoldo  in  the  Maid  of  Honor,  who  is  a  swag- 
gerer, talking  to  his  sovereign  what  no  sovereign  could  endure, 
and  to  gentlemen  what  no  gentlemen  would  answer  without 
pulling  his  nose. 

4.  Shakspeare's  Ague-cheek,  Osric,  &c,  are  displayed  through 
others,  in  the  course  of  social  intercourse,  by  the  mode  of  their 
performing  some  office  in  which  they  are  employed ;  but  Massin- 
ger's  Sylli  come  forward  to  declare  themselves  fools  ab  arbitrium 
auctoris,  and  so  the  diction  always  needs  the  subintelligitur  ('the 
man  looks  as  if  he  thought  so  and  so,')  expressed  in  the  language 
of  the  satirist,  and  not  in  that  of  the  man  himself: — 

Sylli.  You  may,  madam, 
Perhaps,  believe  that  I  in  this  use  art 
To  make  you  dote  upon  me,  by  exposing 
My  more  than  most  rare  features  to  your  view ; 
But  I,  as  I  have  ever  done,  deal  simply, 
A  mark  of  sweet  simplicity,  ever  noted 
In  the  family  of  the  Syllis.     Therefore,  lady, 
Look  not  with  too  much  contemplation  on  me ; 
If  you  do,  you  are  in  the  suds. 

Maid  of  Honor,  Act  i.  sc.  2. 

The  author  mixes  his  own  feelings  and  judgments  concerning  the 
presumed  fool ;  but  the  man  himself,  till  mad,  fights  up  against 
them,  and  betrays,  by  his  attempts  to  modify  them,  that  he  is  no 
fool  at'  all,  but  one  gifted  with  activity  and  copiousness  of  thought, 
image  and  expression,  which  belong  not  to  a  fool,  but  to  a  man 
of  wit  making  himself  merry  with  his  own  character. 

5.  There  is  an  utter  want  of  preparation  in  the  decisive  acts 
of  Massmger's  characters,  as  in  Camiola  and  Aurelia  in  the  Maid 
of   Honor      Why ?     Because  the  dramatis  persona  were   all 


260  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

planned  each  by  itself.  Whereas  in  Shakspeare,  the  play  is  syn- 
genesia  ;  each  character  has,  indeed,  a  life  of  its  own,  and  is  an 
individuum  of  itself,  but  yet  an  organ  of  the  whole,  as  the  heart 
in  the  human  body.  Shakspeare  was  a  great  comparative  anato- 
mist. 

Hence  Massinger  and  all,  indeed,  but  Shakspeare,  take  a  dislike 
to  their  own  characters,  and  spite  themselves  upon  them  by  making 
them  talk  like  fools  or  monsters  ;  as  Fulgentio  in  his  visit  to 
Camioia  (Act  ii.  sc.  2).  Hence  too,  in  Massinger,  the  continued 
flings  at  kings,  courtiers,  and  all  the  favorites  of  fortune,  like  one 
who  had  enough  of  intellect  to  see  injustice  in  his  own  inferiority 
in  the  share  of  the  good  things  of  life,  but  not  genius  enough  to 
rise  above  it,  and  forget  himself.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  have 
the  same  vice  in  the  opposite  pole,  a  servility  of  sentiment  and  a 
spirit  of  partisanship  with  the  monarchical  faction. 

6.  From  the  want  of  a  guiding  point  in  Massinger's  characters, 
you  never  know  what  they  are  about.  In  fact  they  have  no 
character. 

7.  Note  the  faultiness  of  his  soliloquies,  with  connectives  and 
arrangements  that  have  no  other  motive  but  the  fear  lest  the  au- 
dience should  not  understand  him. 

8.  A  play  of  Massinger's  produces  no  one  single  effect,  whether 
arising  from  the  spirit  of  the  whole,  as  in  the  As  You  Like  It ; 
or  from  any  one  indisputably  prominent  character,  as  Hamlet. 
It  is  just  "  which  you  like  best,  gentlemen  !" 

9.  The  unnaturally  irrational  passions  and  strange  whims  of 
feeling  which  Massinger  delights  to  draw,  deprive  the  reader  of 
all  sound  interest  in  the  characters  ; — as  in  Mathias  in  the  Picture, 
and  in  other  instances. 

10.  The  comic  scenes  in  Massinger  not  only  do  not  harmonize 
with  the  tragic,  not  only  interrupt  the  feeling,  but  degrade  the 
characters  that  are  to  form  any  part  in  the  action  of  the  piece, 
so  as  to  render  them  unfit  for  any  tragic  interest.  At  least,  they 
do  not  concern,  or  act  upon,  or  modify,  the  principal  characters. 
As  when  a  gentleman  is  insulted  by  a  mere  blackguard, — it  is 
the  same  as  if  any  other  accident  of  nature  had  occurred,  a  pig 
run  under  his  legs,  or  his  horse  thrown  him.  There  is  no  dra- 
matic interest  in  it. 

I  like  Massinger's  comedies  better  than  his  tragedies,  although 
where  the  situation  requires  it,  he  often  rises  into  the  truly  tragic 


I 


LECTURE  VLL  261 

and  pathetic.  He  excels  in  narration,  and  for  the  most  part  dis- 
plays his  mere  story  with  skill.  But  he  is  not  a  poet  of  high  im- 
agination ;  he  is  like  a  Flemish  painter,  in  whose  delineations 
objects  appear  as  they  do  in  nature,  have  the  same  force  and 
truth,  and  produce  the  same  effect  upon  the  spectator.  But 
Shakspeare  is  beyond  this  ;  he  always  by  metaphors  and  figures 
involves  in  the  thing  considered  a  universe  of  past  and  possible 
sxperiences ;  he  ming.es  earth,  sea  and  air,  gives  a  soul  to  every 
thing,  and  at  the  same  time  that  he  inspires  human  feelings,  adds 
a  dignity  in  his  images  to  human  nature  itself: — 

Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eye ; 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green, 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchymy,  &q. 

33d  Sonnet. 

NOTES  ON  MASSINGER. 

Have  I  not  overrated  Gilford's  edition  of  Massinger  ? — Not,— 
f  I  have,  as  but  just  is,  main  reference  to  the  restitution  of  the 
;ext ;  but  yes,  perhaps,  if  I  were  talking  of  the  notes.  These 
ire  more  often  wrong  than  right.  In  the  Maid  of  Honor,  act  i. 
ic.  5,  Astutio  describes  Fulgentio  as  "A  gentleman,  yet  no  lord." 
jrifFord  supposes  a  transposition  of  the  press  for  "  No  gentleman, 
£et  a  lord."  But  this  would  have  no  connection  with  what  fol- 
ows  :  and  we  have  only  to  recollect  that  "lord"  means  a  lord 
)f  lands,  to  see  that  the  after-lines  are  explanatory.  He  is  a  man 
)f  high  birth,  but  no  landed  property ; — as  to  the  former,  he  is  a 
listant  branch  of  the  blood  royal ; — as  to  the  latter,  his  whole 
ent  lies  in  a  narrow  compass,  the  king's  ear  !  In  the  same  scene 
he  text  stands  : 

Bert.  No !  they  are  useful 
For  your  imitation  ; — I  remember  you,  tfce. ; — 

tnd  Gifford  condemns  Mason's  conjecture  of  '  initiation'  as  void 
)f  meaning  and  harmony.  Now  my  ear  deceives  me  if  '  initia- 
ion'  be  not  the  right  word.  In  fact,  '  imitation'  is  utterly  iinper- 
inent  to  all  that  follows.  Bertoldo  tells  Antonio  that  he  had 
)een  initiated  in  the  manners  suited  to  the  court  by  two  or  three 
acred  beauties,  and  that  as  similar  experience  would  be  equally 
iseful  for  his  initiation  into  the  camp.     Not  a  word  of  his  imita 


262  COUKSE   OF  LECTURES. 

tion.     Besides,  I  say  the  rhythm  requires  'initiation/  and  is  lame 
as  the  verse  now  stands. 

*  Two  or  three  tales,  each  in  itself  independent  of  the  others, 
and  united  only  by  making  the  persons  that  are  the  agents  in 
the  story  the  relations  of  those  in  the  other,  as  when  a  bind- 
weed or  thread  is  twined  round  a  bunch  of  flowers,  each  having 
its  own  root — and  this  novel  narrative  in  dialogue — such  is  the 
character  of  Massinger's  plays. — That  the  juxtaposition  and  the 
tying  together  by  a  common  thread,  which  goes  round  this  and 
round  that,  and  then  round  them  all,  twine  and  intertwine,  are 
contrived  ingeniously — that  the  component  tales  are  well  chosen, 
and  the  whole  well  and  conspicuously  told ;  so  as  to  excite  and 
sustain  the  mind  by  kindling  and  keeping  alive  the  curiosity  of 
the  reader — that  the  language  is  most  pure,  equally  free  from 
bookishness  and  from  vulgarism,  from  the  peculiarities  of  the 
School,  and  the  transiencies  of  fashion,  whether  fine  or  coarse  ; 
that  the  rhythm  and  metre  are  incomparably  good,  and  form  the 
very  model  of  dramatic  versification,  flexible  and  seeming  to  rise 
out  of  the  passions,  so  that  whenever  a  line  sounds  immetrical, 
the  speaker  may  be  certain  he  has  recited  it  amiss,  either  that 
he  has  misplaced  or  misproportioned  the  emphasis,  or  neglected 
the  acceleration  or  retardation  of  the  voice  in  the  pauses  (all 
which  the  mood  or  passion  would  have  produced  in  the  real 
Agent,  and  therefore  demand  from  the  Actor  or  Jermuf«o°r§)  and 
that  read  aright  the  blank  verse  is  not  less  smooth  than  varied, 
a  rich  harmony,  puzzling  the  fingers,  but  satisfying  the  ear — these 
are  Massinger's  characteristic  merits. 

Among  the  varieties  of  blank  verse  Massinger  is  fond  of  the 
anapaest  in  the  first  and  third  foot,  as  : 

"To  your  more  |  than  mas  |  culine  rea  |  son 
that  |  commands  'em||  — "f 

The  Guardian,  Act  i.  sc.  2. 

*  The  notes  on  Massinger  -which,  follow  were  transcribed  from  a  copy  of 
that  dramatist's  works,  belonging  to  Mr.  Gillman.  I  do  not  know  whence 
the  first  was  taken  by  the  original  editor. 

f  Gifford  divides  the  lines  in  question  thus  : 

"  Command  my  sensual  appetites. 

Calip.  As  vassals  to 

Your  more  than  masculine  reason,  that  commands  them." 

But  it  is  obviously  better  to  make  the  first  line  end  with    \  assals,"  so  as  to 


LECTUKE  VII.  268 

Likewise  of  the  second  Peeon  (u-uu)  in  the  first  foot  followed  by 
four  trochees  (-  u)  as  : 

"  So  greedily  |  long  for,  |  know  their  | 
titill  |  ations."         lb.  ib. 

The  emphasis  too  has  a  decided  influence  on  the  metre,  and,  con- 
trary to  the  metres  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics,  at  'least 
to  all  their  more  common  sorts  of  verse,  as  the  hexameter  and 
hex  and  pentameter,  Alchaic,  Sapphic,  &c.  has  an  essential 
agency  on  the  character  of  the  feet  and  power  of  the  verse.  One 
instance  only  of  this  I  recollect  in  Theocritus  : 

ra  ftij  ttaXa,  aula  necpoLVTai, 

unless  Homer'sV?£s,3'^fc,  may  (as  I  believe)  be  deemed  an- 
other—For I  can  not  bring  my  ear  to  believe  that  Homer  would 
have  perpetrated  such  a  cacophony  as  ''Jlgeg,  "Aqsq. 

"  In  fear  |  my  chaasteetee  |  may  be  |  sus- 
pected." |  lb.  ib. 

;n  short,  musical  notes  are  required  to  explain  Massinger— metres 
n  addition  to  prosody.     When  a  speech  is  interrupted,  or  one 
•f  the  characters  speaks  aside,  the  last  svllable  of  the  former 
Speech  and  first  of  the  succeeding  Massinger  counts  but  for  one 
•ecause  both  are  supposed  to  be  spoken  at  the  same  moment. 

"And  felt  the  sweetness  oft" 

"  Hoiv  her  mouth  runs  over." 

Ib.  ib. 

Emphasis  itself  is  twofold,  the  rap  and  the  drawl,  or  the  em- 
hasis  by  quality  of  sound,  and  that  by  quantity— the  hammer 
ad  the  spatula— the  latter  over  2,  3,  4  syllables  or  even  a  whole 
fie  ^  It  is  m  this  that  the  actors  and  speakers  are  generally 
leaking  defective,  they  can  not  equilibrate  an  emphasis,  oi 
read  it  over  a  number  of  syllables,  all  emphasized,  sometimes 
^ually,  sometimes  unequally. 

2  it  only  the  one  over-running  syllable,  which  is  so  common  in  the  last 


LECTURE  VIH. 

DON    QUIXOTE. 

CERVANTES. 

Born  at  Madrid,  1547  ; — Shakspeare,  1564  ;  both  put  off  mor- 
tality on  the  same  day,  the  23d  of  April,  1616, — the  one  in  the 
sixty-ninth,  the  other  in  the  fifty-second,  year  of  his  life.  The 
resemblance  in  their  physiognomies  is  striking,  but  with  a  pre- 
dominance of  acuteness  in  Cervantes,  and  of  reflection  in  Shak- 
speare, which  is  the  specific  difference  between  the  Spanish  and 
English  characters  of  mind. 

I.  The  nature  and  eminence  of  Symbolical  writing  ; — 

II.  Madness,  and  its  different  sorts  (considered  without  preten 
sion  to  medical  science)  ; — 

To   each    of  these,  or  at  least  to  my  own  notions  respecting 
them,  I  must  devote  a  few  words  of  explanation,  in  order  to  ren- 
der the  after-critique  on  Don  Quixote,  the  master-work  of  Cer- 
vantes' and  his  country's  genius,  easily  and  throughout  intelli- 
gible.    This  is  not  the  least  valuable,  though  it  may  most  often 
be  felt  by  us  both  as  the  hes  viest  and  least  entertaining  portion  i 
of  these  critical  disquisitions  :  for  without  it,  I  must  have  foregone  • 
one  at  least  of  the  two  appropriate  objects  of  a  Lecture,  that  of 
interesting  you  during  its  delivery,  and  of  leaving  behind  in  your  i 
minds  the  germs  of  after-thought,  and  the  materials  for  future 
enjoyment.     To  have  been  assured  by  several  of  my  intelligent: 
auditors  that  they  have  reperused  Hamlet  or  Othello  with  in- 
creased satisfaction  in  consequence  of  the  new  points  of  view  in 
which  I  had  placed  those  characters — is  the  highest  compliment 
I  could  receive  or  desire  ;  and  should  the  address  of  this  evening 
open  out  a  new  source  of  pleasure,  or  enlarge  the  former  in  your 
perusal   of  Don   Gluixote,  it  will  compensate  for  the  failure  oi 
any  personal  or  temporary  object. 

I.  The  Symbolical  can  not,  perhaps,  be  better  defined  in  MS* 


LECTUKE   VIII. 


265 


tinction  from  the  Allegorical,  than  that  it  is  always  itself  a  part  of 

that,  of  the  whole   of  which  it   is  the  representative. "  Here 

comes  a  sail" — (that  is,  a  ship)  is  a  symbolical  expression.  "  Be- 
hold our  lion  !"  when  we  speak  of  some  gallant  soldier,  is  alle- 
gorical. Of  most  importance  to  our  present  subject  is  this  point, 
that  the  latter  (the  allegory)  can  not  be  other  than  spoken  con- 
sciously ; — whereas  in  the  former  (the  symbol)  it  is  very  possible 
that  the  general  truth  represented  may  be  working  unconsciously 

in  the  writer's  mind  during  the  construction  of  the  symbol ; 

and  it  proves  itself  by  being  produced  out  of  his  own  mind, as 

the  Don  Quixote  out  of  the  perfectly  sane  mind  of  Cervantes  : 
find  not  by  outward  observation,  or  historically.     The  advantage 
j)f  symbolical  writing  over  allegory  is,  that  it  presumes  no  dis- 
ijunction  of  faculties,  but  simple  predominance. 
J    II.  Madness  may  be  divided  as — 

1.  hypochondriasis  ;  or,  the  man  is  out  of  his  senses, 

2.  derangement  of  the  understanding  ;  or,  the  man  is  out 
of  his  wits. 

3.  loss  of  reason. 

4.  frenzy,  or  derangement  of  the  sensations. 
Cervantes's  own  preface  to  Don  Quixote  is  a  perfect  model  of 

he  gentle,  everywhere  intelligible,  irony  in  the  best  essays  of 
he  Tatler  and  the  Spectator.  Equally  natural  ind  easy,  Cer- 
antes  is  more  spirited  than  Addison  ;  whilst  he  blends  with  the 
srseness  of  Swift,  an  exquisite  flow  and  music  of  style,  and  above 
11,  contrasts  with  the  latter  by  the  sweet  temper  of  a  superior 
iind;  which  saw  the  follies  of  mankind,  and  was  even  at  the 
loment  suffering  severely  under  hard  mistreatment  ;*  and  yet 

ferns  everywhere  to  have  but  one  thought  as  the  undersonn- 

(Brethren  !  with  all  your  faults  I  love  you  still  !" — or  as  a 
mother  that  chides  the  child  she  loves,  with  one  hand  holds  up 
ne  rod,  and  with  the  other  wipes  off  each  tear  as  it  drops  ! 

Don  Quixote  was  neither  fettered  to  the  earth  by  want,  nor 
blden  in  its  embraces  by  wealth  ; — of  which,  with  the  temper- 
pce  natural  to  his  country,  as  a  Spaniard,  he  had  both  far  toe 
Itle,  and  somewhat  too  much,  to  be  under  any  necessity  of  think- 

*  Bien  como  quien  se  tngendro  en  una  car  eel,  donde  toda  incomodidad 
me  su  assiento,  y  todo  triste  ruido  hace  su  habitation.    Like  one  you  may 
ppose  born  in  a  prison,  where  every  inconvenience  keeps  its  residence, 
Id  every  dismal  sound  its  habitation.     Pref.  Jarvis's  Tr. — Ed. 
I  vOL.   IV.  M 


266  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

ing  about  it.  His  age  too,  fifty,  may  be  well  supposed  to  prevent 
his  mind  from  being  tempted  out  of  itself  by  any  of  the  lower 
passions  ; — while  his  habits,  as  a  very  early  riser  and  a  keen 
sportsman,  were  such  as  kept  his  spare  body  in  serviceable  sub- 
jection to  his  will,  and  yet  by  the  play  of  hope  that  accompanies 
pursuit,  not  only  permitted,  but  assisted,  his  fancy  in  shaping 
what  it  would.  Nor  must  we  omit  his  meagreness  and  entire 
featureliness,  face  and  frame,  which  Cervantes  gives  us  at  once  . 
"  It  is  said  that  his  surname  was  Quixada  or  Quesada"  &c. — 
even  in  this  trifle  showing  an  exquisite  judgment  ; — just  once  in- 
sinuating the  association  of  lantem-jaivs  into  the  reader's  mind, 
yet  not  retaining  it  obtrusively  like  the  names  in  old  farces  and  in 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress, — but  taking  for  the  regular  appellative 
one  which  had  the  no  meaning  of  a  proper  name  in  real  life,  and 
which  yet  was  capable  of  recalling  a  number  of  very  different, 
but  all  pertinent,  recollections,  as  old  armor,  the  precious  metals 
hidden  in  the  ore,  &c.  Don  Quixote's  leanness  and  featureliness 
are  happy  exponents  of  the  excess  of  the  formative  or  imaginative  ' 
in  him,  contrasted  with  Sancho's  plump  rotundity,  and  recipiency 
of  external  impression. 

He  has  no  knowledge  of  the  sciences  or  scientific  arts  which 
give  to  the  meanest  portions  of  matter  an  intellectual  interest,  i 
and  which  enable  the  mind  to  decipher  in  the  world  of  the  senses 
the  invisible  agency — that  alone,  of  which  the  world's  phenom- 
ena are  the  effects  and  manifestations, — and  thus,  as  in  a  mirror 
to  contemplate  its  own  reflex,  its  life  in  the  powers,  its  imagina 
tion  in  the  symbolic  forms,  its  moral  instincts  in  the  final  causes. 
and  its  reason  in  the  laws  of  material  nature  :  but — estranged 
from  all  the  motives  to  observation  from  self-interest — the  persons 
that  surround  him  too  few  and  too  familiar  to  enter  into  any  con- 
nection with  his  thoughts,  or  to  require  any  adaptation  of  his  con- 
duct to  their  particular  characters  or  relations  to  himself — his 
judgment  lies  fallow,  with  nothing  to  excite,  nothing  to  employ 
it.  Yet, — and  here  is  the  point,  where  genius  even  of  the  most 
perfect  kind,  allotted  but  to  few  in  the  course  of  many  ages,  does 
not  preclude  the  necessity  in  part,  and  in  part  counterbalance  the 
craving  by  sanity  of  judgment,  without  which  genius  either  can 
not  be,  or  can  not  at  least  manifest  itself, — the  dependency  of  our 
nature  asks  for  some  confirmation  from  without,  though  it  be  only. f 
from  the  shadows  of  other  men's  fictions- 


LECTUKE   VIII.  267 

Too  uninformed,  and  with  too  narrow  a  sphere  of  power  and 
opportunity  to  rise  into  the  scientific  artist,  or  to  be  himself  a 
patron  of  art,  and  with  too  deep  a  principle,  and  too  much  inno- 
cence to  become  a  mere  projector,  Don  Quixote  has  recourse  to 
romances  : — 

His  curiosity  and  extravagant  fondness  herein  arrived  at  that  pitch,  that 
he  sold  many  acres  of  arable  land  to  purchase  boohs  of  knight-errantry,  and 
carried  home  all  he  could  lay  hands  on  of  that  kind  ! — C.  1. 

The  more  remote  these  romances  were  from  the  language  oi 
common  life,  the  more  akin  on  that  very  account  were  they  to 
[  the  shapeless  dreams  and  strivings  of  his  own  mind  ; — a  mind, 
which  possessed  not  the  highest  order  of  genius  which  lives  in  an 
atmosphere  of  power  over  mankind,  but  that  minor  kind  which, 
in  its  restlessness,  seeks  for  a  vivid  representative  of  its  own 
wishes,  and  substitutes  the  movements  of  that  objective  puppet 
for  an  exercise  of  actual  power  in  and  by  itself.  The  more  wild 
and  improbable  these  romances  were,  the  more  were  they  akin  to 
his  will,  which  had  been  in  the  habit  of  acting  as  an  unlimited 
monarch  over  the  creations  of  his  fancy  !  Hence  observe  how 
the  startling  of  the  remaining  common  sense,  like  a  glimmering 
before  its  death,  in  the  notice  of  the  impossible-improbable  of  Don 
elianis,  is  dismissed  by  Don  Quixote  as  impertinent — 

He  had  some  doubt*  as  to  the  dreadful  wounds  which  Don  Belianis  gave 

nd  received :  for  he  imagined,  that  notwithstanding  the  most  expert  sur- 

Kgeons  had  cured  him,  his  face  and  whole  body  must  still  be  full  of  seams  and 

fecars.     Nevertlteless\  he  commended  in  his  author  the  concluding  his  book 

[with  a  promise  of  that  unfinishable  adventure  ! — C.  1. 

Hence  also  his  first  intention  to  turn  author  ;  but  who,  with 
|uch  a  restless  struggle  within  him,  would  content  himself  with 
[Writing  in  a  remote  village  among  apathists  and  ignorants  ? 
during  his  colloquies  with  the  village-priest  and  the  barber- sur- 
geon, in  which  the  fervor  of  critical  controversy  feeds  the  passion 
Ind  gives  reality  to  its  object — what  more  natural  than  that 
|he  mental  striving  should  become  an  eddy  ? — madness  may  per- 
haps be  defined  as  the  circling  in  a  stream  which  should  be  pro- 
gressive and  adaptive  ;  Don  Quixote  grows  at  length  to  be  a  man 
[|ut  of  his  wits  ;  his  understanding  is  deranged  ;  and  hence  with- 
out the  least  deviation  from  the  truth  of  nature,  without  losing 
*  No  estaba  muy  bicn  con. — Ed.  .  f  Pero  con  todc. — Ed. 


268  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

the  least  trait  of  personal  individuality,  he  becomes  a  substantial 
living  allegory,  or  personification  of  the  reason  and  the  moral 
sense,  divested  of  the  judgment  and  the  understanding.  Sancho 
is  the  converse.  He  is  the  common  sense  without  reason  or 
imagination ;  and  Cervantes  not  only  shows  the  excellence  and 
power  of  reason  in  Don  Quixote,  but  in  both  him  and  Sancho  the 
mischiefs  resulting  from  a  severance  of  the  two  main  constituents 
of  sound  intellectual  and  moral  action.  Put  him  and  his  master 
together,  and  they  form  a  perfect  intellect ;  but  they  are  separa- 
ted and  without  cement ;  and  hence  each  having  a  need  of  the 
other  for  its  own  completeness,  each  has  at  times  a  mastery  over 
the  other.  For  the  common  sense,  although  it  may  see  the  prac- 
tical inapplicability  of  the  dictates  of  the  imagination  or  abstract 
reason,  yet  can  not  help  submitting  to  them.  These  two  charac- 
ters possess  the  world,  alternately  and  interchangeably  the  cheater 
and  the  cheated.  To  impersonate  them,  and  to  combine  the  per- 
manent with  the  individual,  is  one  of  the  highest  creations  of 
genius,  and  has  been  achieved  by  Cervantes  and  Shakspeare,  al- 
most alone. 


Observations  on  particular  passages, — 


B.  i.  c.  1.  But  not  altogether  approving  of  his  having  broken  it  to  pieces 
with  so  much  ease,  to  secure  himself  from  the  like  danger  for  the  future, 
he  made  it  over  again,  fencing  it  with  small  bars  of  iron  within,  in  such  a 
manner,  that  he  rested  satisfied  of  its  strength  ;  and  without  caring  to  make  a 
fresh  experiment  on  it,  he  approved  and  looked  upon  it  as  a  most  excellent 
helmet. 

His  not  trying  his  improved  skull-cap  is  an  exquisite  trait  of 
human  character,  founded  on  the  oppugnancy  of  the  soul  in  such 
a  state  to  any  disturbance  by  doubt  of  its  own  broodings.  Even 
the  long  deliberation  about  his  horse's  name  is  full  of  meaning ; 
—for  in  these  day-dreams  the  greater  part  of  the  history  passes 
and  is  carried  on  in  words,  which  look  forward  to  other  words  as 
what  will  be  said  of  them. 

lb.  Near  the  place  where  he  lived,  there  dwelt  a  very  comely  country 
lass,  with  whom  he  had  formerly  been  in  love ;  though,  as  it  is  supposed 

she  never  knew  it,  nor  troubled  herself  about  it. 

I 

The  nascent  love  for  the  country  lass,  but  without  any  attempt  < 


LECTURE   VIII.  269 

at  utterance,  or  an  opportunity  of  knowing  her  except  as  the 
hint — the  on  eon — of  the  inward  imagination,  is  happily  con- 
ceived in  both  parts  ; — first,  as  confirmative  of  the  shrinking  back 
of  the  mind  on  itself,  and  its  dread  of  having  a  cherished  image 
destroyed  by  its  own  judgment ;  and  secondly,  as  showing  how 
necessarily  love  is  the  passion  of  novels.  Novels  are  to  love  as 
fairy  tales  to  dreams.  I  never  knew  but  two  men  of  taste  and 
feeling  who  could  not  understand  why  I  was  delighted  with  the 
Arabian  Nights'  Tales,  and  they  were  likewise  the  only  persons 
in  my  knowledge  who  scarcely  remembered  having  ever  dreamed 
Magic  and  war — itself  a  magic — are  the  day-dreams  of  childhood  ; 
love  is  the  day-dream  of  youth,  and  early  manhood. 

C.  2.  "  Scarcely  had  ruddy  Phoebus  spread  the  golden  tresses  of  his 
beauteous  hair  over  the  face  of  the  wide  and  spacious  earth  ;  and  scarcely 
had  the  little  painted  birds,  with  the  sweet  and  mellifluous  harmony  of  their 
forked  tongues,  saluted  the  approach  of  rosy  Aurora,  who,  quitting  the  soft 
couch  of  her  jealous  husband,  disclosed  herself  to  mortals  through  the  gates 
of  the  Mauchegan  horizon ;  when  the  renowned  Don  Quixote,"  &e. 

How  happily  already  is  the  abstraction  from  the  senses,  from 
observation,  and  the  consequent  confusion  of  the  judgment, 
marked  in  this  description  !  The  knight  is  describing  objects 
immediate  to  his  senses  and  sensations  without  borrowing  a 
single  trait  from  either.  Would  it  be  difficult  to  find  parallel 
descriptions  in  Dryden's  plays  and  in  those  of  his  successors  ? 

C.  3.  The  host  is  here  happily  conceived  as  one  who,  from  his 
past  life  as  a  sharper,  was  capable  of  entering  into  and  humoring 
the  knight,  and  so  perfectly  in  character,  that  he  precludes  a  con- 
siderable source  of  improbability  in  the  future  narrative,  by  en- 

|i  forcing  upon  Don  Quixote  the  necessity  of  taking  money  with 

jhim. 

C.  3.  "  Ho,  there,  whoever  thou  art,  rash  knight,  that  approachest  to 
I  touch  the  arms  of  the  most  valorous  adventurer  that  ever  girded  sword,"  <fec. 

|Don  Quixote's  high  eulogiums  upon  himself — "  the  most  valor- 
ous adventurer  !" — but  it  is  not  himself  that  he  has  before  him, 
[but  the  idol  of  his  imagination,  the  imaginary  being  whom  he  is 
Sacting.  And  this,  that  it  is  entirely  a  third  person,  excuses  his 
(heart  from  the  otherwise  inevitable  charge  of  selfish  vanity  ;  and 
■  jso  by  madness  itself  he  preserves  our  esteem,  and  renders  those 
■> tactions  natural  by  which  he,  the  first  person,  deserves  it. 


270  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

C.  4    Andres  and  his  master. 

The  manner  in  which  Don  Quixote  redressed  this  wrong,  is  a 
picture  of  the  true  revolutionary  passion  in  its  first  honest  state, 
while  it  is  yet  only  a  bewilderment  of  the  understanding-.  You 
have  a  benevolence  limitless  in  its  prayers,  which  are  in  fact  as- 
pirations towards  omnipotence  ;  but  between  it  and  beneficence, 
the  bridge  of  judgment — that  is,  of  measurement  of  personal 
power — intervenes,  and  must  be  passed.  Otherwise  you  will  be 
bruised  by  the  leap  into  the  chasm,  or  be  drowned  in  the  revolu- 
tionary river,  and  drag  others  with  you  to  the  same  fate. 

C.  4.   Merchants  of  Toledo. 

When  they  were  come  so  near  as  to  be  seen  and  heard,  Don  Quixote 
raised  his  voice,  and  with  arrogant  air  cried  out :  "  Let  the  whole  world 
stand  ;  if  the  whole  world  does  not  confess  that  there  is  not  in  the  whole 
world  a  damsel  more  beautiful  than,"  &o. 

Now  mark  the  presumption  which  follows  the  self-complacency 
of  the  last  act  !  That  was  an  honest  attempt  to  redress  a  real 
wrong  ;  this  is  an  arbitrary  determination  to  enforce  a  Brissotine 
or  Rousseau's  ideal  on  all  his  lellow-creatures. 

Let  the  whole  world  stand  ! 

•  If  there  had  been  any  experience  in  proof  of  the  excellence  of 
our  code,  where  would  be  our  superiority  in  this  enlightened  age?' 

"  No  ?  the  business  is  that  without  seeing  her,  you  believe,  confess,  affirm, 
swear,  and  maintain  it ;  and  if  not,  1  challenge  yon  all  to  battle"* 

Next  see  the  persecution  and  fury  excited  by  opposition  how 
ever  moderate  !  The  only  words  listened  to  are  those,  thatM 
without  their  context  and  their  conditionals,  and  transformed  into 
positive  assertions,  might  give  some  shadow  of  excuse  for  the  vio 
lence  shown  !  This  rich  story  ends,  to  the  compassion  of  the 
men  in  their  senses,  in  a  sound  rib  roasting  of  the  idealist  by  the 
muleteer,  the  mob.  And  happy  for  thee,  poor  knight  !  that  the 
mob  were  against  thee  !  For  had  they  been  with  thee,  by  ths 
change  of  the  moon  and  of  them,  thy  head  would  have  been  off. 

C.  5.  first  part — The  idealist  recollects  the  causes  that  had 
been  necessary  to  the  reverse,  and  attempts  to  remove  them — too 
late.     He  is  beaten  and  disgraced. 


Donde  no,  conmigo  sois  en  battalia,  gente  descomunal ! — Ed. 


LECTUKE   VIII. 


27 1 


C.  6.  This  chapter  on  Don  Quixote's  library  proves  that  the 
author  did  not  wish  to  destroy  the  romances,  but  to  cause  then) 
to  be  read  as  romances — that  is,  for  their  merits  as  poetry. 

C.  7.  Among  other  things,  Don  Quixote  told  him,  he  should  dispose  him- 
self to  go  with  him  willingly  ;— for  some  time  or  other  such  an  adventure 
might  present,  that  an  island  might  be  won,  in  the  turn  of  a  hand,  and  he 
be  left  governor  thereof. 

At  length  the  promises  of  the  imaginative  reason  begin  to  act 

on  the  plump,  sensual,  honest,  common-sense  accomplice, but 

unhappily  not  in  the  same  person,  and  without  the  copula  of  the 
judgment,— in  hopes  of  the  substantial  good  things,  of  which  the 
former  contemplated  only  the  glory  and  the  colors. 

|  C  7.  Sancho  Panza  went  riding  upon  his  ass,  like  any  patriarch,  with  his 
(wallet  and  leathern  bottle,  and  with  a  vehement  desire  to  find  himself  gov 
ernor  of  the  island  which  his  master  had  promised  him. 

The  first  relief  from  regular  labor  is  so  pleasant  to  poor 
Sancho  ! 

C.  8.  "  I  no  gentleman  1  I  swear  by  the  great  God,  thou  liest,  as  I  am  a 
Christian.  Biscainer  by  land,  gentleman  by  sea,  gentleman  for  the  devil, 
ind  thou  liest :  look  then  if  thou  hast  any  thing  else  to  say." 

This  Biscainer  is  an  excellent  image  of  the  prejudices  and  bio-- 
try  provoked  by  the  idealism  of  a  speculator.  This  story  hap- 
uly  detects  the  trick  which  our  imagination  plays  in  the  descrip- 
ion  of  single  combats  :  only  change  the  preconception  of  the 
lagnificence  of  the  combatants,  and  all  is  gone. 

B.  ii.  c.  2.  "  Be  pleased,  my  lord  Don  Quixote,  to  bestow  upon  me  the 
overnment  of  that  island,"  tfcc. 

Sancho's  eagerness  for  his  government,  the  nascent  lust  of  ac- 
lal  democracy,  or  isocracy  ! 

C.  2.  "  But  tell  me,  on  your  life,  have  you  ever  seen  a  more  valorous 
light  than  I,  upon  the  whole  face  of  the  known  earth  ?     Have  you  read 

story  of  any  other,  who  has,  or  ever  had,  more  bravery  in  assailing,  more 
•eath  in  holding  out,  more  dexterity  in  wounding,  or  more  address  in  giv- 
g  a  fall  ?"— «  The  truth  is,"  answered  Sancho,  "that  I  never  read  any  his- 
ry  at  all ;  for  I  can  neither  read  nor  write ;  but  what  I  dare  affirm  ia 
at  I  never  served  a  bolder  master,"  &c. 

This  appeal  +o  Sancho,  and  Sancho's  answer,  are  exquisite!} 


272  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

humorous.  It  is  impossible  not  to  think  of  the  French  bulletins 
and  proclamations.  Remark  the  necessity  under  which  we  are 
of  being  sympathized  with,  fly  as  high  into  abstraction  as  we 
may,  and  how  constantly  the  imagination  is  recalled  to  the 
ground  of  our  common  humanity  !  And  note  a  little  further  on, 
the  knight's  easy  vaunting  of  his  balsam,  and  his  quietly  defer 
ring  the  making  and  application  of  it. 
C.  3.  The  speech  before  the  goatherds  : 

"  Happy  times  and  happy  ages,"  &c  * 

Note  the  rhythm  of  this,  and  the  admirable  beauty  and  wisdom 
of  the  thoughts  in  themselves,  but  the  total  want  of  judgment  in 
Don  Q,uixote's  addressing  them  to  such  an  audience. 

B.  iii.  c.  3.  Don  Quixote's  balsam,  and  the  vomiting  and 
consequent  relief ;  an  excellent  hit  at  panacea  nostrums,  which 
cure  the  patient  by  his  being  himself  cured  of  the  medicine  bj 
revolting  nature. 

C.  4.  "  Peace !  and  have  patience,  the  day  will  come,"  <fec. 

The  perpetual  promises  of  the  imagination  ! 

lb.  "  Your  Worship,"  said  Sancho,  "  would  make  a  better  preacher  tl 
knight  errant !" 

Exactly  so.     This  is  the  true  moral. 

C.  6.  The  uncommon  beauty  of  the  description  in  the  com- 
mencement of  this  chapter.  In  truth,  the  whole  of  it  seems  to 
put  all  nature  in  its  heights  and  its  humiliations  before  us. 

lb.  Sancho's  story  of  the  goats  : 

"  Make  account,  he  carried  them  all  over,"  said  Don  Quixote,  "and  do  not 
bft  going  and  coming  in  this  manner  ;  for  at  this  rate,  you  will  not  have  done 
carrying  them  over  in  a  twelvemonth."  "  How  many  are  passed  already  V 
said  Sancho,  &c 

Observe  the  happy  contrast  between  the  all-generalizing  mind 
of  the  mad  knight,  and  Sancho's  all-particularizing  memory. 
How  admirable  a  symbol  of  the  dependence  of  all  copula  on  the 
higher  powers  of  the  mind,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  sue-  j 
cession  in  time  and  the  accidental  relations  of  space.     Men  of  J 
mere  common  sense  have  no  theory  or  means  of  making  on^  fact :| 

*   Dichosa  edad  y  slglos  dichosos  aquellos,  &c. — Ed. 


LECTURE   VIII.  273 

more  important  or  prominent  than  the  rest  ;  if  they  lose  one 
link,  all  is  lost.  Compare  Mrs.  Quickly  and  the  Tapster.^  And 
note  also  Sancho's  good  heart,  when  his  master  is  about  to  leave 
him.  Don  Quixote's^conduct  upon  discovering  the  fulling-ham- 
mers,  proves  he  was  meant  to  be  in  his  senses.  Nothing  can  be 
better  conceived  than  his  fit  of  passion  at  Sancho's  laughing,  and 
his  sophism  of  self-justification  by  the  courage  he  had  shown. 

Sancho  is  by  this  time  cured,  through  experience,  as  far  as  his 
awn  errors  are  concerned  ;  yet  still  is  he  lured  on  by  the  uncon- 
querable awe  of  his  master's  superiority,  even  when  he  is  cheat- 
ing him. 

C.  8.  The  adventure  of  the  Galley-slaves.  I  think  this  is  the 
only  passage  of  moment  in  which  Cervantes  slips  the  mask  of  his 
hero,  and  speaks  for  himself. 

C.  9.  Don  Quixote  desired  to  have  it,  arid  bade  him  take  the  money,  and 
keep  .'*■  for  himself.     Sancho  kissed  his  hands  for  the  favor,  &c. 

Observe  Sancho's  eagerness  to  avail  himself  of  the  permission 
of  his  master,  who,  in  the  war  sports  of  knight-errantry,  had, 
without  any  selfish  dishonesty,  overlooked  the  menm  and  timm. 
Sancho's  selfishness  is  modified  by  his  involuntary  goodness  of 
heart,  and  Don  Quixote's  flighty  goodness  is  debased  by  the 
involuntary  or  unconscious  selfishness  of  his  vanity  and  self 
applause. 

C.  10.  Cardenio  is  the  madman  of  passion,  who  meets  and 
easily  overthrows  for  the  moment  the  madman  of  imagination. 
And  note  the  contagion  of  madness  of  any  kind,  upon  Don  Quix- 
ote's interruption  of  Cardenio's  story. 

C.  11.  Perhaps  the  best  specimen  of  Sancho's  proverbializing 
is  this : — 

"And  I  (Don  Q.)  say  again,  they  lie,  and  will  lie  two  hundred  times 
more,  all  who  say,  or  think  her  so."  "  I  neither  say,  nor  think  so,"  answered 
Sancho ;  "  let  those  who  say  it,  eat  the  lie,  and  swallow  it  with  their  bread : 
whether  they  were  guilty  or  no,  they  have  given  an  account  to  God  before 
now :  I  come  from  my  vineyard,  I  know  nothing ;  I  am  no  friend  to  inquir- 
ing into  other  men's  lives ;  for  he  that  buys  and  lies  shall  find  the  lie  left 
in  his  purse  behind ;  besides,  naked  was  I  born,  and  naked  I  remain ;  I  nei- 
ther win  nor  lose ;  if  they  were  guilty,  what  is  that  to  me  ?  Many  think 
to  find  bacon,  where  there  is  not  so  much  as  a  pin  to  hang  it  on :  but  who 
can  hedge  in  the  cuckoo  ?    Especially,  do  they  spare  God  himself?" 

*  See  The  Friend,  IT.  p.  4 16.— Ed. 


274  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

lb.  "And  it  is  no  great  matter,  if  it  be  in  another  hand;  for  by  what  1 
remember,  Dulcinea  can  neither  write  nor  read,"  &c. 

The  wonderful  twilight  of  the  mind  !  and  mark  Cervantes's 
courage  in  daring  to  present  it,  and  trust  to  a  distant  posterity 
for  an  appreciation  of  its  truth  to  nature. 

P.  ii.  b.  iii.  c.  9.  Sancho's  account  of  what  he  had  seen  on 
Clavileno  is  a  counterpart  in  his  style  to  Bon  duixote's  adven- 
tures in  the  cave  of  Montesinos.  This  last  is  the  only  impeach- 
ment of  the  knight's  moral  character;  Cervantes  just  gives  one 
instance  of  the  veracity  failing  before  the  strong  cravings  of  the 
imagination  for  something  real  and  external ;  the  picture  would 
not  have  been  complete  without  this ;  and  yet  it  is  so  well  man- 
aged, that  the  reader  has  no  unpleasant  sense  of  Don  Quixote 
having  told  a  lie.  It  is  evident  that  he  hardly  knows  whether  it 
was  a  dream  or  not ;  and  goes  to  the  enchanter  to  inquire  the 
real  nature  of  the  adventure. 

SUMMARY  OF  CERVANTES. 

A  Castilian  of  refined  manners  ;  a  gentleman,  true  to  religion, 
and  true  to  honor. 

A  scholar  and  a  soldier,  and  fought  under  the  banners  of  Don 
John  of  Austria,  at  Lepanto,  lost  his  arm  and  was  captured. 

Endured  slavery  not  only  with  fortitude,  but  with  mirth ;  and 
by  the  superiority  of  nature,  mastered  and  overawed  his  barbarian 
owner. 

Finally  ransomed,  he  resumed  his  native  destiny,  the  awful 
task  of  achieving  fame  ;  and  for  that  reason  died  poor  and  a 
prisoner,  while  nobles  and  kings  over  their  goblets  of  gold  gave . 
relish  to  their  pleasures  by  the  charms  of  his  divine  genius.  He 
was  the  inventor  of  novels  for  the  Spaniards,  and  in  his  Persilis 
and  Sigismunda,  the  English  may  find  the  germ  of  their  Robinson 
Crusoe. 

The  world  was  a  drama  to  him.  His  own  thoughts,  in  spite 
of  poverty  and  sickness,  perpetuated  for  him  the  feelings  of  youth. 
He  painted  only  what  he  knew  and  had  looked  into,  but  he  knew 
and  had  looked  into  much  indeed  ;  and  his  imagination  was  evel 
at  hand  to  adapt  and  modify  the  world  of  his  experience.  Of 
delicious  love  he  fabled,  yet  with  stainless  virtue. 


LECTURE    IX. 

ON    THE    DISTINCTIONS    OF    THE    WITTY,   THE    DROLL,  THE    ODD,  AND 

THE    HUMOROUS;    THE  NATURE  AND  CONSTITUENTS    OF    HUMOR.  I 

RABELAIS SWIFT STERNE . 

I. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  of  our  intellectual  operations  ara 
those  of  detecting  the  difference  in  similar,  and  the  identity  in 
dissimilar,  things.  Out  of  the  latter  operation  it  is  that  wit 
prises;  and  it,  generically  regarded,  consists  in  presenting  thoughts 
ir  images  in  an  unusual  connection  with  each  other,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  exciting  pleasure  by  the  surprise.  This  connection  may 
oe  real ;  and  there  is  in  fact  a  scientific  wit ;  though  where  the 
object,  consciously  entertained,  is  truth,  and  not  amusement,  we 
fommonly  give  it  some  higher  name.  But  in  wit  popularly 
understood,  the  connection  may  be,  and  for  the  most  part  is, 
Apparent  only,  and  transitory;  and  this  connection  may  be  by 
noughts,  or  by  words,  or  by  images.  The  first  is  our  Butler's 
special  eminence  ;  the  second,  Voltaire's ;  the  third,  which  we 
ftener  call  fancy,  constitutes  the  larger  and  more  peculiar  part 
f  the  wit  of  Shakspeare.  You  can  scarcely  turn  to  a  single 
tpeech  of  Falstaff's  without  finding  instances  of  it.  Nor  does 
Ht  always  cease  to  deserve  the  name  by  being  transient,  or 
icapable  of  analysis.  I  may  add  that  the  wit  of  thoughts 
elongs  eminently  to  the  Italians,  that  of  words  to  the  French, 
nd  that  of  images  to  the  English. 

II.  Where  the  laughable  is  its  own  end,  and  neither  inference, 
or  moral  is  intended,  or  where  at  least  the  writer  would  wish  it 
)  to  appear,  there  arises  what  we  call  drollery.  The  pure,  un- 
lixed,  ludicrous,  or  laughable  belongs  exclusively  to  the  under- 
anding,  and  must  be  presented  under  the  form  of  the  senses ;  it 
es  within  the  spheres  of  the  eye  and  the  ear,  and  hence  is  allied 
the  fancy.     It  does  not  appertain  to  the  reason  or  the  moral 


276  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

sense,  and  accordingly  is  alien  to  the  imagination.  I  think  Aris- 
totle has  already  excellently  defined^  the  laughable,  to  yelolov, 
as  consisting  of,  or  depending  on,  what  is  out  of  its  proper  time 
and  place,  yet  without  danger  or  pain.  Here  the  impropriety — 
to  aionov — is  the  positive  qualification;  the  dangerlessness — tA 
bxivdwov — the  negative.  Neither  the  understanding  without  an 
object  of  the  senses,  as  for  example,  a  mere  notional  error,  or 
idiocy; — nor  any  external  object,  unless  attributed  to  the  under- 
standing, can  produce  the  poetically  laughable.  Nay,  even  in 
ridiculous  positions  of  the  body  laughed  at  by  the  vulgar,  there  is 
a  subtle  personification  always  going  on,  which  acts  on  the,  per- 
haps, unconscious  mind  of  the  spectator  as  a  symbol  of  intellec- 
tual character.  And  hence  arises  the  imperfect  and  awkward 
effect  of  comic  stories  of  animals ;  because  although  the  under- 
standing is  satisfied  in  them,  the  senses  are  not.  Hence  too,  it 
is,  that  the  true  ludicrous  is  its  own  end.  When  serious  satire 
commences,  or  satire  that  is  felt  as  serious,  however  comically 
drest,  free  and  genuine  laughter  ceases ;  it  becomes  sardonic. 
This  you  experience  in  reading  Young,  and  also  not  unfrequently 
in  Butler.     The  true  comic  is  the  blossom  of  the  nettle. 

III.  When  words  or  images  are  placed  in  unusual  juxtaposition 
rather  than  connection,  and  are  so  placed  merely  because  the  juxta- 
position is  unusual — we  have  the  odd  or  the  grotesque ;  the  occa- 
sional use  of  which  in  the  minor  ornaments  of  architecture,  is  an  in- 
teresting problem  for  a  student  in  the  psychology  of  the  Fine  Arts. 

IV.  In  the  simply  laughable  there  is  a  mere  disproportion  be- 
tween a  definite  act  and  a  definite  purpose  or  end,  or  a  dispro- 
portion of  the  end  itself  to  the  rank  or  circumstances  of  the  defi- 
nite person  ;  but  humor  is  of  more  difficult  description.  I  musl 
try  to  define  it  in  the  first  place  by  its  points  of  diversity  from  the 

*  He  elsewhere  commends  this  Def :  "  To  resolve  laughter  into  an  ex 
prcssion  of  contempt  is  contrary  to  fact,  and  laughable  enough.  Laughtei 
is  a  convulsion  of  the  nerves,  and  't  seems  as  if  nature  cut  short  the  rapi< 
thrill  of  pleasure  on  the  nerves  by  a  sudden  convulsion  of  them  to  preven 
the  sensation  becoming  painful — Aristotle  s  Def,  is  as  good  as  can  be.  Sur' 
prise  at  perceiving  any  thing  out  of  its  usual  place  when  the  unusualness  i 
not  accompanied  by  a  sense  of  serious  danger.  Such  surprise  is  alway 
pleasurable,  and  it  is  observable  that  surprise  accompanied  with  circua 
stances  of  danger  becomes  Tragic.  Hence  Farce  may  often  border  o 
Tragedy ;  indeed  Farce  is  nearer  Tragedy  in  its  Essence  tha/i  Comedy  is." 

Table  Talk 


LECTURE   IX.  277 

former  species.  Humor  does  not,  like  the  different  kinds  of  wit* 
which  is  impersonal,  consist  wholly  in  the  understanding  and  the 
senses.  No  combination  of  thoughts,  words,  or  images  will  of 
itself  constitute  humor,  unless  some  peculiarity  of  individual  tern 
perament  and  character  be  indicated  thereby,  as  the  cause  of  the 
same.  Compare  the  Comedies  of  Congreve  with  the  Falstaffin 
Henry  IV.  or  with  Sterne's  Corporal  Trim,  Uncle  Toby,  and  Mr. 
Shandy,  or  with  some  of  Steele's  charming  papers  in  the  Tatler, 
and  you  will  feel  the  difference  better  than  I  can  express  it. 
Thus  again  (to  take  an  instance  from  the  different  works  of  the 
same  writer),  in  Smollett's  Strap,  his  Lieutenant  Bowling,  his 
Morgan  the  honest  Welshman,  and  his  Matthew  Bramble,  we 
have  exquisite  humor, — while  in  his  Peregrine  Pickle  we  find  an 
abundance  of  drollery,  which  too  often  degenerates  into  mere  odd- 
ity ;  in  short,  we  find  that  a  number  of  things  are  put  together 
to  counterfeit  humor,  but  that  there  is  no  growth  from  within. 
And  this  indeed  is  the  origin  of  the  word,  derived  from  the  hu 
moral  pathology,  and  excellently  described  by  Ben  Jonson  : 

So  in  every  human  body, 
The  eholer,  melancholy,  phlegm,  and  blood, 
By  reason  that  they  flow  continually 
In  some  ane  part,  and  are  not  continent, 
Receive  the  name  of  humors.     Mow  thus  far 
It  may,  by  metaphor,  apply  itself 
Unto  the  general  disposition  : 
As  when  some  one  peculiar  quality 
Doth  so  possess  a  man,  that  it  doth  draw 
All  bis  effects,  his  spirits,  and  his  powers, 
In  their  confluctions,  all  to  run  one  way, 
This  may  be  truly  said  to  be  a  humor.* 

Hence  we  may  explain  the  congeniality  of  humor  with  pathos,  so 
oxquisite  in  Sterne  and  Smollett,  and  hence  also  the  tender  feeling 
which  we  always  have  for,  and  associate  with,  the  humors  or 
hobby-horses  of  a  man.  First,  we  respect  a  humorist,  because 
absence  of  interested  motives  is  the  groundwork  of  the  character, 
although  the  imagination  of  an  interest  may  exist  in  the  individ- 
ual himself,  as  if  a  remarkably  simple-hearted  man  should  pride 
himself  on  his  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  how  well  lie  can 
manage  it : — and  secondly,  there  always  is  in  a  genuine  humor 

*  Every  Man  Out  Of  His  Humor.     Prologue. 


278  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

an  acknowledgment  of  the  hollowness  and  farce  of  the  world,  and 
its  disproportion  to  the  godlike  within  us.  And  it  follows  imme- 
diately from  this,  that  whenever  particular  acts  have  reference  to 
particular  selfish  motives,  the  humorous  bursts  into  the  indignant 
and  abhorring  ;  whilst  all  follies  not  selfish  are  pardoned  or  pal- 
liated. The  danger  of  this  habit,  in  respect  of  pure  morality,  is 
strongly  exemplified  in  Sterne. 

This  would  be  enough,  and  indeed  less  than  this  has  passed, 
(or  a  sufficient  account  of  humor,  if  we  did  not  recollect  that  not 
every  predominance  of  character,  even  where  not  precluded  by 
the  moral  sense,  as  in  criminal  dispositions,  constitutes  what  we 
mean  by  a  humorist,  or  the  presentation  of  its  produce,  humor. 
What  then  is  it  ?  Is  it  manifold  ?  Or  is  there  some  one  humor- 
ific  point  common  to  all  that  can  be  called  humorous  ? — I  am  not 
prepared  to  answer  this  fully,  even  if  my  time  permitted  :  but  I 
think  there  is  ; — and  that  it  consists  in  a  certain  reference  to  the 
general  and  the  universal,  by  which  the  finite  great  is  brought 
into  identity  with  the  little,  or  the  little  with  the  finite  great,  so 
as  to  make  both  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  infinite.  The 
little  is  made  great,  and  the  great  little  in  order  to  destroy  both  ; 
because  all  is  equal  in  contrast  with  the  infinite.  "  It  is  not  with- 
out reason,  brother  Toby,  that  learned  men  write  dialogues  onj 
long  noses."*  I  would  suggest,  therefore,  that  whenever  a  finite 
is  contemplated  in  reference  to  the  infinite,  whether  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  humor  essentially  arises.  In  the  highest  humor, 
at  least,  there  is  always  a  reference  to,  and  a  connection  with, 
some  general  power  not  finite,  in  the  form  of  some  finite  ridicu- 
lously disproportionate  in  our  feelings  to  that  of  which  it  is,  never- 
theless, the  representative,  or  by  which  it  is  to  be  displayed 
Humorous  writers,  therefore,  as  Sterne  in  particular,  delight,  after 
much  preparation,  to  end  in  nothing,  or  in  a  direct  contradiction. 

That  there  is  some  truth  in  this  definition,  or  origination  of 
humor,  is  evident ;  for  you  can  not  conceive  a  humorous  man  who 
does  not  give  some  disproportionate  generality,  or  even  a  univer- 
sality to  his  hobby-horse,  as  is  the  case  with  Mr.  Shandy  ;  or  at 
least  there  is  an  absence  of  any  interest  but  what  arises  from  the 
humor  itself,  as  in  my  Uncle  Toby,  and  it  is  the  idea  of  the  soul, 
of  its  undefined  capacity  and  dignity,  that  gives  the  sting  to  any 
absorption  of  it  by  any  one  pursuit,  and  this  not  in  respect  of  thfi 
*  Trial  Sli.  vol.  iii.  c.  37. 


LECTURE   IX.  279 

humorist  as  a  mere  member  of  society  for  a  particular,  however 
mistaken,  interest,  but  as  a  man. 

The  English  humor  is  the  most  thoughtful,  the  Spanish  the 
most  ethereal — the  most  ideal — of  modern  literature.  Amongst 
the  classic  ancients  there  was  little  or  no  humor  in  the  foregoing 
sense  of  the  term.  Socrates,  or  Plato  under  his  name,  gives  some 
notion  of  humor  in  the  Banquet,  when  he  argues  that  tragedy  and 
comedy  rest  upon  the  same  ground.  But  humor  properly  took  its 
rise  in  the  middle  ages  ;  and  the  Devil,  the  Vice  of  the  mysteries, 
incorporates  the  modern  humor  in  its  elements.  It  is  a  spirit 
measured  by  disproportionate  finites.  The  Devil  is  not,  indeed, 
perfectly  humorous  ;  but  that  is  only  because  he  is  the  extreme 
of  all  humor. 

RABELAIS* 
Born  at  Chinon,  1483-4.— Died,  1553. 

One  can  not  help  regretting  that  no  friend  of  Rabelais  (and 
surely  friends  he  must  have  had)  has  left  an  authentic  account 
of  him.  His  buffoonery  was  not  merely  Brutus'  rough  stick, 
which  contained  a  rod  of  gold  ;  it  was  necessary  as  an  amulet 
against  the  monks  and  bigots.  Beyond  a  doubt,  he  was  among 
the  deepest  as  well  as  boldest  thinkers  of  his  age.  Never  was  a 
more  plausible,  and  seldom,  I  am  persuaded,  a  less  appropriate 
line  than  the  thousand  times  quoted, 

Rabelais  laughing  in  his  easy  chair — 

!of  Mr.  Pope.  The  caricature  of  his  filth  and  zanyism  proves  how 
fully  he  both  knew  and  felt  the  danger  in  which  he  stood.  I 
Icould  write  a  treatise  in  proof  and  praise  of  the  morality  and 
moral  elevation  of  Rabelais'  work  which  would  make  the  church 
ptare,  and  the  conventicle  groan,  and  yet  should  be  the  truth,  and 
nothing  but  the  truth.  I  class  Rabelais  with  the  creative  minds 
pf  the  world,  Shakspeare,  Dante,  Cervantes,  &c. 
|  All  Rabelais'  personages  are  phantasmagoric  allegories,  but 
jranurge  above  all.     He  is  throughout  the  navovgyla, — the  wis- 

|  *  ~No  note  remains  of  that  part  of  this  Lecture  which  treated  of  Rabelais, 
oris  seems,  therefore,  a  convenient  place  for  the  reception  of  some  remarks 
jlvritten  by  Mr.  C.  in  Mr.  Gillman's  copy  of  Rabelais,  about  the  year  1825. 
See  Table  Talk,  VI.  p.  333.— Ed. 


280  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

dom,  that  is,  the  cunning  of  the  human  animal, — the  understand- 
ing, as  the  faculty  of  means  to  purposes  without  ultimate  ends,  in 
the  most  comprehensive  sense,  and  including  art,  sensuous  fancy, 
and  all  the  passions  of  the  understanding.  It  is  impossible  to 
read  Rabelais  without  an  admiration  mixed  with  wonder  at  the 
depth  and  extent  of  his  learning,  his  multifarious  knowledge,  and 
original  observation  beyond  what  books  could  in  that  age  have 
supplied,  him  with. 

B.  iii.  c.  9.  How  Panurgo  asketh  counsel  of  Pantagruel,  whether  he  should 
marry,  yea  or  no. 

Note  this  incomparable  chapter.     Pantagruel  stands  for  the 
reason  as  contra-distinguished  from  the  understanding  and  choice, 
that  is,  from  Panurge  ;  and  the  humor  consists  in  the  latter  ask-  i 
ing  advice  of  the  former  on  a  subject  in  which  the  reason  can, 
only  give  the  inevitable  conclusion,  the  syllogistic  ergo,  from  the  ( 
premisses  provided  by  the  understanding  itself,  which  puts  each 
case  so  as  of  necessity  to  predetermine  the  verdict  thereon.     This 
chapter,  independently  of  the  allegory,  is  an  exquisite  satire  01 
the  spirit  in  which  people  commonly  ask  advice. 


SWIFT* 

Born  in  Dublin,  1667.— Died,  1145. 

In  Swift's  writings  there  is  a  false  misanthropy  grounded  upon 
an  exclusive  contemplation  of  the  vices  and  follies  of  mankind, 
and  this  misanthropic  tone  is  also  disfigured  or  brutalized  by  his 
obtrusion  of  physical  dirt  and  coarseness.  I  think  Gulliver's 
Travels  the  great  work  of  Swift.  In  the  voyages  to  Lilliput  and 
Brobdingnag  he  displays  the  littleness  and  moral  contemptibility 
of  human  nature  ;  in  that  to  the  Houyhnhnms  he  represents  the 
disgusting  spectacle  of  man  with  the  understanding  only,  without 
the  reason  or  the  moral  feeling,  and  in  his  horse  he  gives  the 
misanthropic  ideal  of  man — that  is,  a  being  virtuous  from  rule 
and  duty,  but  untouched  by  the  principle  of  love. 

*  From  Mr.  Green's  note. — Ed. 


LECTURE   IX.  281 

STERNE. 
Born  at  Clonmel,  1713.— Died,  1768. 

"With  regard  to  Sterne,  and  the  charge  of  licentiousness  which 
presses  sc  seriously  upon  his  character  as  a  writer,  I  would  re- 
mark that  there  is  a  sort  of  knowingness,  the  wit  of  which  de- 
pends— 1st,  on  the  modesty  it  gives  pain  to  ;  or,  2dly,  on  the  in- 
nocence and  innocent  ignorance  over  which  it  triumphs  ;  or,  3dly, 
on  a  certain  oscillation  in  the  individual's  own  mind  between  the 
remaining  good  and  the  encroaching  evil  of  his  nature — a  sort  of 
dallying  with  the  devil — a  fluxionary  act  of  combining  courage 
and  cowardice,  as  when  a  man  snuffs  a  candle  with  his  fingers 
for  the  first  time,  or  better  still,  perhaps,  like  that  trembling  dar- 
ing with  which  a  child  touches  a  hot  tea  urn,  because  it  has 
been  forbidden  ;  so  that  the  mind  has  in  its  own  white  and  black 
angel  the  same  or  similar  amusement,  as  may  be  supposed  to 
take  place  between  an  old  debauchee  and  a  prude, — she  feeling 
resentment,  on  the  one  hand,  from  a  prudential  anxiety  to  pre- 
serve appearances  and  have  a  character,  and,  on  the  other,  an  in- 
ward sympathy  with  the  enemy.  We  have  only  to  suppose 
society  innocent,  and  then  nine  tenths  of  this  sort  of  wit  would  be 
like  a  stone  that  falls  in  snow,  making  no  sound  because  exciting 
no  resistance ;  the  remainder  rests  on  its  being  an  offence  against 
the  good  manners  of  human  nature  itself. 

This  source,  unworthy  as  it  is,  may  doubtless  be  combined  with 
wit,  drollery,  fancy,  and  even  humor,  and  we  have  only  to  regret 
the  misalliance  ;  but  that  the  latter  are  quite  distinct  from  the 
former,  may  be  made  evident  by  abstracting  in  our  imagination 
!  the  morality  of  the  characters  of  Mr.  Shandy,  my  Uncle  Toby, 
and  Trim,  which  are  all  antagonists  to  this  spurious  sort  of  wit, 
from  the  rest  of  Tristram  Shandy.  And  by  supposing,  instead  of 
them,  the  presence  of  two  or  three  callous  debauchees.  The  re- 
sult will  be  pure  disgust.  Sterne  can  not  be  too  severely  censured 
for  thus  using  the  best  dispositions  of  our  nature  as  the  panders 
and  condiments  for  the  basest. 

The  excellencies  of  Sterne  consist — 

1 .  In  bringing  forward  into  distinct  consciousness  those  minutiee 
of  thought  and  feeling  which  appear  trifles,  yet  have  an  impor- 
tance for  the  moment,  and  which  almost  every  man  feels  in  one 


282  COURSE- OF   LECTURES. 

way  or  other.  Thus  is  produced  the  novelty  of  an  individual 
peculiarity,  together  with  the  interest  of  a  something-  that  belongs 
to  our  common  nature.  In  short,  Sterne  seizes  happily  on  those 
points,  in  which  every  man  is  more  or  less  a  humorist.  And, 
indeed,  to  be  a  little  more  subtle,  the  propensity  to  notice  these 
things  does  itself  constitute  the  humorist,  and  the  superadded 
power  of  so  presenting  them  to  men  in  general  gives  us  the  man 
of  humor.  Hence  the  difference  of  the  man  of  humor,  the  effect 
of  whose  portraits  does  not  depend  on  the  felt  presence  of  himself, 
as  a  humorist,  as  in  the  instances  of  Cervantes  and  Shakspeare — 
nay,  of  Rabelais  too  ;  and  of  the  humorist,  the  effect  of  whose 
works  does  very  much  depend  on  the  sense  of  his  own  oddity,  as 
in  Sterne's  case,  and  perhaps  Swift's  ;  though  Swift  again  would 
require  a  separate  classification. 

2.  In  the  traits  of  human  nature,  which  so  easily  assume  a  par- 
ticular cast  and  color  from  individual  character.  Hence  this  ex- 
cellence and  the  pathos  connected  with  it  quickly  pass  into 
humor,  and  form  the  ground  of  it.  See  particularly  the  beautiful 
passage,  so  wtll  known,  of  Uncle  Toby's  catching  and  liberating 
the  fly  : 

"  Go," — says  he,  one  day  at  dinner,  to  an  overgrown  one  which  had  buzzed 
about  his  nose,  and  tormented  him  cruelly  all  dinner-time,  and  which,  after 
infinite  attempts,  he  had  caught  at  last,  as  it  flew  by  him ; — "  I'll  not  hurt 
thee,"  says  my  Uncle  Toby,  rising  from  his  chair,  and  going  across  the 
room,  with  the  fly  in  his  hand, — "  I'll  not  hurt  a  hair  of  thy  head : — Go/' 
says  he,  lifting  up  the  sash,  and  opening  his  hand  as  he  spoke,  to  let  it  es- 
cape ; — "  go,  poor  devil,  get  thee  gone,  why  should  I  hurt  thee  ?  This  world 
is  surely  wide  enough  to  hold  both  thee  and  me."     Vol.  ii.  ch.  12. 

Observe  in  this  incident  how  individual  character  may  be  given 
by  the  mere  delicacy  of  presentation  and  elevation  in  degree  of  a 
common  good  quality,  humanity,  which  in  itself  would  not  be 
characteristic  at  all. 

3.  In  Mr.  Shandy's  character, — the  essence  of  which  is  a  craving 
for  sympathy  in  exact  proportion  to  the  oddity  and  unsympathiza- 
bility  of  what  he  proposes  ; — this  coupled  with  an  instinctive  de-  ; 
aire  to  be  at  least  disputed  with,  or  rather  both  in  one,  to  dispute 
and  yet  to  agree — and  holding  as  worst  of  all — to  acquiesce' 
without  either  resistance  or  sympathy.  This  is  charmingly,  in 
deed,  profoundly  conceived,  and  is  psychologically  and  ethically 
true  of  all  Mr.  Shandies.     Note,  too,  how  the  contrasts  of  charac- , 


LECTURE   IX.  28S 

ter,  which  are  always  either  balanced  or  remedied,  increase  the 
love  between  the  brothers. 

No  writer  is  so  happy  as  Sterne  in  the  unexaggerated  and 
truly  natural  representation  of  that  species  of  slander,  which  con- 
sists in  gossiping  about  our  neighbors,  as  whetstones  of  our  moral 
discrimination  ;  as  if  they  were  conscience-blocks  which  we  used 
in  our  apprenticeship,  in  order  not  to  waste  such  precious  mate- 
rials as  our  own  consciences  in  the  trimming  and  shaping  of  our- 
selves by  self-examination  • — 

Alas  o'day  !— had  Mrs.  Shandy  (poor  gentlewoman!)  had  but  her  wish  in 
going  up  to  town  just  to  lie  in  and  come  down  a^ain  ;  which  they  say   she 

j  begged  and  prayed  for  upon  her  bare  knees,  and  which,  in  my  opinion  con- 
sidering the  fortune  which  Mr.  Shandy  got  with  her,  was  no  such  mighty 

|  matter  to  have  complied  with,  the  lady  and  her  babe  might  both  of  them 

i  have  been  alive  at  this  hour.     Vol.  i.  c.  18. 

5.. When  you  have  secured  a  man's  likings  and  prejudices  in 

i  your  favor,  you  may  then  safely  appeal  to  his  impartial  judgment 

In  the  following  passage  not  only  is  acute  sense  shrouded  in  wit 

hat  a  life  and  a  character  are  added  which  exalt  the  whole  into 

the  dramatic  : — 

■i  see  plainly,  Sir,  by  your  looks"  (or  as  the  ease  happened)  my  father 
would  say--  that  you  do  not  heartily  subscribe  to  this  opinion-which  to 
;  those    he  would  add,  "who  have  not  carefully  sifted  it  to  the  bottom!-] 
own  has  an  air  more  of  fancy  than  of  solid  reasoning  in  it ;  and  yet  mv  dear 
Sir,  if  I  may  presume  to  know  your  character,  I  am  morally  assured  I 
'should  hazard  little  in  stating  a  case  to  you,  not  as  a  party  in  the  dispute 
but  as  a  judge,  and  trusting  my  appeal  upon  it  to  your  good  sense  and  can- 
did disquisition  in  this  matter;  you  are  a  person  free  from  as  many  narrow 
prejudices  of  education  as  most  men ;  and,  if  I  may  presume  to  penetrate 
(farther  into  you,  of  a  liberality  of  genius  above  bearing  down  an  opinion 
jmerely  because  it  wants  friends.     Your  son,-your  dear  son,-from  whose 
'sweet  and  open  temper  you  have  so  much  to  expect,— your  Billy  Sir  !— 
kould  you,  fur  the  world,  have  called  him  Judas?     Would  you,  my  dear 
f>ir    he  would  say,  laying  his  hand  upon  your  breast,  with  the  genteelest 
Mdress,-and  in  that  soft  and  irresistible  piano  of  voice,  which  the  nature 
01  the  argumentum  ad  hominem  absolutely  requires,—"  Would  you   Sir  if 
ijew  of  a  godfather  had  proposed  the  name  for  your  child,  and  offered  you 
his  purse  along  with  it,  would  you  have  consented  to  such  a  desecration  of 
nm     0  my  God!"  he  would  say,  looking  up,  "if  I  know  your  temper 
ightly,  S-r,  you  are  incapable  of  it;— you  would  have  trampled  upon  the 
>tter  ;-you  would  have  thrown  the  temptation  at  the  tempter's  head  with 
ibhorrence.     Your  greatness  of  mind  in  this  action,  which  I  admire,  with 


284  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

that  generous  contempt  of  money,  which  you  show  me  in  the  whole  tran- 
saction, is  really  noble  -—and  what  renders  it  more  so,  is  the  principle  of 
it  ;—the  workings  of  a  parent's  love  upon  the  truth  and  conviction  of  thia 
very  hypothesis,  namely,  that  were  your  son  called  Judas,— the  sordid  and 
treacherous  idea,  so  inseparable  from  the  name,  would  have  accompanied 
him  through  life  like  his  shadow,  and  in  the  end  made  a  miser  and  a  rascal 
of  him,  in  spile,  Sir,  of  your  example."    Vol.  i.  c.  19. 

6.  There  is  great  physiognomic  tact  in  Sterne.  See  it  par- 
ticularly displayed  in  his  description  of  Dr.  Slop,  accompanied 
with  all  that  happiest  use  of  drapery  and  attitude,  which  at  once 
give  reality  by  individualizing  and  vividness  by  unusual,  yet 
probable,  combinations  : — 

Imagine  to  yourself  a  little  squat  uncourtly  figure  oi  a  Doctor  Slop,  of 
about  four  feet  and  a  half  perpendicular  height,  with  a  breadth  of  back,  and 
a  sesquipedality  of  belly,  which  might  have  done  honor  to  a  sergeant  in  tfa| 

horseguards. 

«  *  *  *  *  *  *  *    ' 

Imagine  such  a  one  ;— for  such,  I  say,  were  the  outhnes  of  Doctor  Slop'a 
figure,  coming  slowly  along,  foot  by  foot,  waddling  through  the  dirt  upon 
the  vertebra  of  a  little  diminutive  pony,  of  a  pretty  color— but  of  strength- 
alack !  scarce  able  to  have  made  an  amble  of  it,  under  such  a  fardel,  had 
the  roads  been  in  an  ambling  condition :— they  were  not.  Imagine  to  your- 
self Obadiah  mounted  upon  a  strong  monster  of  a  coach-horse,  pricked  into 
a  full  gallop,  and  making  all  practicable  speed  the  adverse  way.  VoLu. 
e.  9. 

7.  1  think  there  is  more  humor  in  the  single  remark,  which  I 
have  quoted  before—"  Learned  men,  brother  Toby,  don't  write 
dialogues  upon  long  noses  for  nothing  !"— than  in  the  whole 
Slawkenburghian  tale  that  follows,  which  is  mere  oddity  inter- 
spersed with  drollery. 

8.  Note  Sterne's  assertion  of,  and  faith  in  a  moral  good  in  the 
characters  of  Trim,  Toby,  &c.  as  contrasted  with  the  cold  skep- 
ticism of  motives  which  is  the  stamp  of  the  Jacobin  spirit.     Vol. 

v.  c.  9.  .  . 

9.  You  must  bear  in  mind,  in  order  to  do  justice  to  Rabelais 
and  Sterne,  that  by  right  of  humoristic  universality  each  part  is 
essentially  a  whole  in  itself.  Hence  the  digressive  spirit  is  not 
mere  wantonness,  but  in  fact  the  very  form  and  vehicle  of  their 
genius.  The  connection,  such  as  was  needed,  is  given  by  tlur 
continuity  of  the  characters. 

Instances  of  different  forms  of  wit,  taken  largely: 


i 


LECTUKE   IX.  285 

1.  "  Why  are  you  reading  romances  at  your  age  ?" — "  Why,  I  used  to  be 
tond  of  history,  but  I  have  given  it  up — it  was  so  grossly  improbable." 

2.  "  Pray,-  sir,  do  it !*— although  you  have  promised  me." 

3.  The  Spartan  mother's — 

"  Return  with,  or  on,  thy  shield." 

"  My  sword  is  too  short !" — "  Take  a  step  forwarder." 

4.  The  Gasconade  : — 

"  I  believe  you,  Sir  !  but  you  will  excuse  my  repeating  it  on  account  of 
my  provincial  accent." 

o.  Pasquil  on  Pope  Urban,  who  had  employed  a  committee  to 
rip  up  the  old  errors  of  his  predecessors. 

Some  one  placed  a  pair  of  spurs  on  the  heels  of  the  statue  of 
St.  Peter,  and  a  label  from  the  opposite  statue  of  St.  Paul,  on  the 
same  bridge  : — 

St.  Paul.  "  Whither  then  are  you  bound  V 

St.  Peter.  "  I  apprehend  danger  here ; — they'll  soon  call  me  in  question 
i  for  denying  my  Master." 

i     St.  Paul.  "  Nay,  then,  I  had  better  be  off  too  ;  for  they'll  question  me  for 
I having  persecuted  the  Christians,  before  my  conversion." 

6.  Speaking  of  the  small  German  potentates,  I  dictated  the 
phrase — officious  for  equivalents.  This  my  amanuensis  wrote — 
fishi?igfor  elephants  ; — which,  as  I  observed  at  the  time,  was  a 
sort  of  Noah's  angling,  that  could  hardly  have  occurred,  except  at 
the  commencement  of  the  Deluge. 


LECTURE    X. 

DONNE — DANTE MILTON 1  ARADISE    LOST 

DONNE* 

Born  in  London,  1573.— Died,  1631. 

I. 
With  Donne,  whose  muse  on  dromedary  trots, 
"Wreathe  iron  pokers  into  true-love  knots ; 
Rhyme's  sturdy  cripple,  fancy's  maze  and  clue, 
Wit's  forge  and  fire-blast,  meaning's  press  and  screw. 

II. 

See  lewdness  and  theology  combin'd,— 
A  cynic  and  a  sycophantic  mind ; 
A  fancy  sliar'd  party  per  pale  between 
Death's  heads  and  skeletons,  and  Aretine  !— 
Not  his  peculiar  defect  or  crime, 
But  the  true  current  mintage  of  the  time. 
Such  were  the  establish'd  signs  and  tokens  given 
To  mark  a  loyal  churchman,  sound  and  even, 
Free  from  papistic  and  fanatic  leaven. 

The  wit  of  Donne,  the  wit  of  Butler,  the  wit  of  Pope,  the  wit 
of  Congreve,  the  wit  of  Sheridan— how  many  disparate  things 
are  here  expressed  by  one  and  the  same  word,  Wit !— Wonder- 
exciting  vigor,  intenseness  and  peculiarity  of  thought,  using  at 
will  the  almost  boundless  stores  of  a  capacious  memory,  and  ex- 
ercised on  subjects,  where  we  have  no  right  to  expect  it— this  is 

*  Nothing  remains  of  what  was  said  on  Donne  in  this  Lecture.  Here,1 
therefore,  as  in  previous  like  instances,  the  gap  is  filled  up  with  some  notes 
written  by  Mr.  Coleridge  in  a  volume  of  Cbalmer's  Poets,  belonging  to  Mr. 
Gillman  *  The  verses  were  added  in  pencil  to  the  collection  of  commenda- 
tory lines ;  No.  I.  is  Mr.  C.'s ;  the  publication  of  No.  II.  I  trust  the  all-ac- 
complished author  will,  under  the  circumstances,  pardon.  Numerous  anc 
elaborate  notes  by  Mr.  Coleridge  on  Donne's  Sermons  are  in  existence,  anc 
will  be  published  hereafter. — Ed. 


LECTURE   X.  287 

the  wit  of  Donne!  The  four  others  I  am  just  in  the  mood  to 
describe  and  inter-distinguish ; — what  a  pity  that  the  marginal 
space  will  not  let  me  ! 

My  face  in  thine  eye,  thine  in  mine  appears, 
And  true  plain  hearts  do  in  the  faces  rest ; 
Where  can  we  find  two  fitter  hemispheres 
Without  sharp  north,  without  declining  west  ? 

Good-Morrow,  v.  15,  &c. 

The  sense  is  : — Our  mutual  loves  may  in  many  respects  be  fitly 
compared  to  corresponding  hemispheres  ;  but  as  no  simile  squares 
(nihile  simile  est  idem),  so  here  the  simile  fails,  for  there  is  noth- 
ing in  our  loves  that  corresponds  to  the  cold  north,  or  the  declin- 
ing west,  which  in  two  hemispheres  must  necessarily  be  sup- 
posed. But  an  ellipse  of  such  length  will  scarcely  rescue  the  line 
from  the  charge  of  nonsense  or  a  bull.     January,  1829. 

Woman's  constancy. 

A  misnomer.     The  title  ought  to  be — 

Mutual  Inconstancy. 

Whether  both  th'  Indias  of  spice  and  mine,  &c. 

Sun  Rising,  v.  11. 

And  see  at  night  thy  western  land  of  mine,  <fce. 

Progress  of  the  Soul,  1  Song,  2  st. 

This  use  of  the  word  mine  specifically  for  mines  of  gold,  silver, 
)r  precious  stones,  is,  I  believe,  peculiar  to  Donne. 


DANTE. 

Born  at  Florence,  1265 —Died,  1321. 

As  I  remarked  in  a  former  Lecture  on  a  different  subject  (for 
subjects  the  most  diverse  in  literature  have  still  their  tangents), 
-he  Gothic  character,  and  its  good  and  evil  fruits,  appeared  less 
n  Italy  than  in  any  other  part  of  European  Christendom.  There 
ras  accordingly  much  less  romance,  as  that  word  is  commonly 
inderstood  ;  or,  perhaps,  more  truly  stated,  there  was  romance 
nstead  of  chivalry.  In  Italy,  an  earlier  imitation  of,  and  a  more 
svident  and  intentional  blending  with,  the  Latin  literature  took 


a88  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

nWe  than  elsewhere.     The  operation  of  the  feudal  system,  too, 
t   incaknlablTweaker,  of  that  singular  ehain  of  independent 
Irdependentsfthe  principle  of  which  was  a  confederacy  for  the 
preservation  of  individual,  consistently  with  general,  feedo rm   In 
short  Italy,  in  the  time  of  Dante,  was  an  after-birth  ol  eldest 
Greece   a  renewal  or  a  reflex  of  the  old  Italy  under  its  kings  and 
Soman  consuls,  a  net-work  of  free  little  *^*J*j££   ; 
same  domestic  feuds,  civil  wars,  and  party  spmt-the  same  vices 
X£  pvoduced  on  a  similarly  narrow  theatre-the  existing 
!e0f  things  being,   as   in  all  small  democracies,  under  the 
working  and  direction,  of  certain  individuals,  to  whose  wfll  even 
Tel  ws  were  swayed  ;-wh,lst  at  the  same  time  the  singular 
J  ctacle  was  exhibited  amidst  all  this  confusion  of  theflonrish- 
Z      commerce,  and  the  protection  and  encouragement  of  ette 
a"°d  arts      Never  was  the  commercial  spirit  so  well  reconciled  to 
hanger  principles  of  social  polity  as  **^J££ 
there  to  union  and  permanence  and  elevation-not  as  the  over 
balance  of  it  in  England  is  now  doing,  to  dislocation,  change  and 
Sdiadationr   The  intensest  patriotism  reigned  in  these 
Immunises,  but  confined  and  attached  exclusively  to .the  srn^ 
locality  of  the  patriot's  birth  and  residence ;  whereas  in  the  tree 
Gothic  feudal!  m,  country  was  nothing  hut  the  preservation  of 
petnal independence.     But  then,  on  the  other  han  ,  as  a  cou, 
Lbalance  to  these   disuniting  elements,  there  was  in  Dante  s 
itat   as  m  Greece,  a  much  greater  uniformity  of  religion  common 
to  all  than  amongst  the  northern  nations.  . 

I  pon  these  hints  the  history  of  the  republican  asms  of  anciart 

Greece  and  modern  Italy  ought  to  be  written.     There  are  three 

tods  or  stages  of  historic  narrative  ;-l.  that  of  the  annahsto, 

H  ronicler  who  deals  merely  in  facts  and  events  arranged  mo  - 

U     Sme,  having  no  principle  of  selection,  no  plan  of  arraiig, 

ment,  and  whose  work  properly  constitutes  a  supplemen   t.  * 

noetical  writings  of  romance  or  heroic  legends  -2.  that  ot  «, 

writer  who  takes  his  stand  on  some  moral  point,  and  selects 

Teres  of  events  for  the  express  purpose  of  illustrating  it  and  n 

whose  hands  the  narrative  of  the  selected  events  U  modified .M 

Sprinkle  of  selection  ;-as  Thncydides,  whose  object  «  * 

de  crfbe  the  evils  of  democratic  and  aristocratic  partisanships ,- 

0  '  Polybius,  whose  design  was  to  show  the  social  benefits  re aj 

la  from  the  triumph  and  grandeur  of  Borne,  m   public  mst.fi 


LECTURE  X'.  289 

tions  and  military  discipline  ;— or  Tacitus,  whose  secret  aim  was 
to  exhibit  the  pressure  and  corruptions  of  despotism ;  in  all  which 
writers  and  others  like  them,  the  ground-object  of  the  historian 

colors  with  artificial  lights  the  facts  which  he  relates  : 3.  and 

which  in  idea  is  the  grandest— the  most  truly  founded  in  philos- 
ophy— there  is  the  Herodotean  history,  which  is  not  composed 
with  reference  to  any  particular  causes,  but  attempts  to  describe 
human  nature  itself  on  a  great  scale  as  a  portion  of  the  drama  of 

providence,  the  free  will  of  man  resisting  the  destiny  of  events 

for  the  individuals  often  succeeding  against  it,  but  for  the  race 
always  yielding  to  it,  and  in  the  resistance  itself  invariably  afford- 
ing means  towards  the  completion  of  the  ultimate  result.  Mit- 
ford's  history  is  a  good  and  useful  work  ;  but  in  his  zeal  against 
democratic  government,  Mitford  forgot,  or  never  saw,  that  an- 
cient Greece  was  not,  nor  ought  ever  to  be  considered,  a  per- 
manent thing,  but  that  it  existed,  in  the  disposition  of  provi- 
dence, as  a  proclaimer  of  ideal  truths,  and  that  everlasting 
proclamation  being  made,  that  its  functions  were  naturally  at  an 
end. 

However,  in  the  height  of  such  a  state  of  society  in  Italy,  Dante 
toas  born  and  flourished  ;  and  was  himself  eminently  a  picture 
j)f  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  But  of  more  importance  even  than 
pris,  to  a  right  understanding  of  Dante,  is  the  consideration  that 
the  scholastic  philosophy  was  then  at  its  acme  even  in  itself ; 
but  more  especially  in  Italy,  where  it  never  prevailed  so  exclu- 
ively  as  northward  of  the  Alps.  It  is  impossible  to  understand 
the  genius  of  Dante,  and  difficult  to  understand  his  poem,  with- 
out some  knowledge  of  the  characters,  studies,  and  writings  of  the 
ichoolmen  of  the  twelfth,  thirteenth,  and  fourteenth  centuries. 
?or  Dante  was  the  living  link  between  religion  and  philosophy ; 
le  philosophized  the  religion  and  Christianized  the  philosophy  of 
taly  ;  and,  in  this  poetic  union  of  religion  and  philosophy,  he 
tecame  the  ground  of  transition  into  the  mixed  Platonism  and 
Lristotelianism  of  the  Schools,  under  which,  by  numerous  minute 
xticles  of  faith  and  ceremony,  Christianity  became  a  craft  of 
air-splitting,  and  was  ultimately  degraded  into  a  complete  fetisch 
worship,  divorced  from  philosophy,  and  made  up  of  a  faith  with- 
ut  thought,  and  a  credulity  directed  by  passion.  Afterwards, 
ideed,  philosophy  revived  under  condition  of  defending  this  very 
nperstition  ;  and,  in  so  doing,  it  necessarily  led  the  way  to  its 

vol.  iv  ]\f 


290  COUESE   OF  LECTURES. 

subversion,  and  that  in  exact  proportion  to  the  influence  of  the 
philosophic  schools.  Hence  it  did  its  work  most  completely  in 
Germany,  then  in  England,  next  in  France,  then  in  Spain,  least 
of  all  in  Italy.  We  must,  therefore,  take  the  poetry  of  Dante  as 
Christianized,  but  without  the  further  Gothic  accession  of  proper 
chivalry.  It  was  at  a  somewhat  later  period,  that  the  importa 
tions  from  the  East,  through  the  Venetian  commerce  and  the 
crusading  armaments,  exercised  a  peculiarly  strong  influence  on 

Italy. 

In  studying  Dante,  therefore,  we  must  consider  carefully  the 
differences  produced,  first,  by  allegory  being  substituted  for  poly- 
theism ;  and  secondly  and  mainly,  by  the  opposition  of  Christian- 
ity to  the  spirit  of  pagan  Greece,  which  receiving  the  very  names 
of  its  gods  from  Egypt,  soon  deprived  them  of  all  that  was  univer- 
sal. The  Greeks  changed  the  ideas  into  Unites,  and  these  fjnite* 
into  anthropomorphi,  or  forms  of  men.  Hence  their  religion, 
their  poetry,  nay,  their  very  pictures,  became  statuesque.  With 
them  the  form  was  the  end.  The  reverse  of  this  was  the  natural 
effect  of  Christianity  ;  in  which  finites,  even  the  human  form, 
must,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  mind,  be  brought  into  connection  with, 
and  be  in  fact  symbolical  of,  the  infinite  ;  and  must  be  considered 
in  some  enduring,  however  shadowy  and  indistinct,  point  of  view, 
as  the  vehicle  or  representative  of  moral  truth. 

Hence  resulted  two  great  effects  ;  a  combination  of  poetry  with 
doctrine,  and,  by  turning  the  mind  inward  on  its  own  essence 
instead  of  letting  it  act  only  on  its  outward  circumstances  and 
communities,  a  combination  of  poetry  with  sentiment.  And  it  is 
this  inwardness  or  subjectivity,  which  principally  and  most  fun- 
damentally distinguishes  all  the  classic  from  all  the  modern  poe- 
try.  Compare  the  passage  in  the  Iliad  (Z\  vi.  119-236)  in  which 
Diomed  and  Glaucus  change  arms, — 

Xelpdg  f  uXhrjyiov  ?M(3tT7]v  ml  racruaavTo— 

They  took  each  other  by  the  hand,  and  pledged  friendship— 

with  the  scene  in  Ariosto  (Orlando  Furioso,  c.  i.  st.  20-22),  where 
Rinaldo  and  Ferrauto  fight  and  afterwards  make  it  up  : — 

Al  Pagan  la  proposta  non  dispiacque : 
Cosi  fu  differita  la  tenzone  ; 
E  tal  tregua  tra  lor  subito  naeque, 
Si  V  odio  e  V  ira  va  in  oblivinne, 


LECTURE  X.  291 

Che  1  Pagano  al  partir  dalle  frescbe  acque 
Non  lascio  a  piede  il  buon  figliuol  d'  Amone  ; 
Con  preghi  iuvita,  e  al  fin  lo  toglie  in  groppa, 
E  per  1'  orme  d'  Angelica  galoppa. 

Here  Homer  would  have  left  it.  But  the  Christian  poet  has  his 
own  feelings  to  express,  and  goes  on  : — 

Oh  gran  bonta  de'  cavalieri  antiqui ! 
Eran  rivali,  eran  di  fe  diversi, 
E  si  sentian  degli  aspri  colpi  iniqui 
Per  tutta  la  persona  anco  dolersi ; 
E  pur  per  selve  oscure  e  calh  obbliqui 
Insieme  van  senza  sospetto  aversi  ! 

And  here  you  will  observe,  that  the  reaction  of  Ariosto's  own 
feelings  on  the  image  or  act  is  more  fore-grounded  (to  use  a 
painter's  phrase)  than  the  image  or  act  itself. 

The  two  different  modes  in  which  the  imagination  is  acted  on 
by  the  ancient  and  modern  poetry,  may  be  illustrated  by  the 
parallel  effects  caused  by  the  contemplation  of  the  Greek  or  Ro- 
man-Greek architecture,  compared  with  the  Gothic.  In  the 
Pantheon,  the  whole  is  perceived  in  a  perceived  harmony  with 
the  parts  which  compose  it ;  and  generally  you  will  remember 
that  where  the  parts  preserve  any  distinct  individuality,  there 
simple  beauty,  or  beauty  simply,  arises  ;  but  where  the  parts  melt 
undistinguished  into  the  whole,  there  majestic  beauty,  or  majesty, 
is  the  result.  In  York  Minster,  the  parts,  the  grotesques,  are  in 
themselves  very  sharply  distinct  and  separate,  and  this  distinction 
and  separation  of  the  parts  is  counterbalanced  only  by  the  multi- 
tude and  variety  of  those  parts,  by  which  the  attention  is  bewil- 
dered ; — whilst  the  whole,  or  that  there  is  a  whole  produced,  is 
altogether  a  feeling  in  which  the  several  thousand  distinct  im- 
pressions lose  themselves  as  in  a  universal  solvent.  Hence  in  a 
Gothic  cathedral,  as  in  a  prospect  from  a  mountain's  top,  there  is 
indeed  a  unity,  an  awful  oneness  ; — but  it  is,  because  all  distinc- 
ron  evades  the  eye.  And  just  such  is  the  distinction  between  the 
Antigone  of  Sophocles  and  the  Hamlet  of  Shakspeare.^ 

The  Divina  Commedia  is  a  system  of  moral,  political,  and  theo- 
ogical  truths,  with  arbitrary  personal  exemplifications,  which 
ire  not,  in  my  opinion,  allegorical.     I  do  not  even  feel  convinced 

See  Lect.  i.  p.  234,  and  note  :  and  compare  with  Schelling's  Dram.  Vor 
emnc/.    Lect.  i.  vol.  i.  p.  10. 


• 


292  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

that  the  punishments  in  the  Inferno   are   strictly  allegorical 
rather  take  them  to  have  been  in  Dante's  mind  ^^-allegorical, 
or  conceived  in  analogy  to  pure  allegory.  _ 

I  have  said,  that  a  combination  of  poetry  with  doctrines,  is  one 
of  the  characteristics  of  the  Christian  muse  ;  but  I  think  Dante 
has  not  succeeded  in  effecting  this  combination  nearly  so  well  as 

Milton.  ,  ,  r 

This  comparative  failure  of  Dante,  as  also  some  other  peculiar- 
ities of  his  mind,  in  malam  partem,  must  be  immediately  attrib- 
uted to  the  state  of  North  Italy  in  his  time,  which  is  vividly 
represented  in  Dante's  life  ;  a  state  of  intense  democratic^  par- 
tisanship, in  which  an  exaggerated  importance  was  attached  to 
individuals,  and  which  whilst  it  afforded  a  vast  field  for  the  in- 
tellect, opened  also  a  boundless  arena  for  the  passions,  and  in 
which  envy,  jealousy,  hatred,  and  other  malignant  feelings  coula 
and  did  assume  the  form  of  patriotism,  even  to  the  individuals 
own  conscience.  . 

All  this  common,  and,  as  it  were,  natural  partisanship,  was 
acroravated  and  colored  by  the  G-uelf  and  Ghibellme  factions; 
and  in  part  explanation  of  Dante's  adherence  to  the  latter,  you 
must  particularly  remark,  that  the  Pope  had  recently  territorial- 
ized  his  authority  to  a  great  extent,  and  that  this  increase  of  ter- 
ritorial power  in  the  church,  was  by  no  means  the  same  bene- 
ficial movement  for  the  citizens  of  free  republics,  as  the  parallel 
advance  in  other  countries  was  for  those  who  groaned  as  vassals 
under  the  oppression  of  the  circumjacent  baronial  castles.* 

By  way  of  preparation  to  a  satisfactory  perusal  of  the  Divnia 
Commedia,  I  will  now  proceed  to  state  what  I  consider  to  be 
Dante's  chief  excellences  as  a  poet.     And  I  begin  with 

I  Style— the  vividness,  logical  connection,  strength  and  en- 
ergy of  which  can  not  be  surpassed.  In  this  I  think  Dante  su- 
perior to  Milton  ;  and  his  style  is  accordingly  more  mutable  than 
Milton's,  and  does  to  this  day  exercise  a  greater  influence  on  the 
literature  of  his  country.  You  can  not  read  Dante  without  feel- 
ino-  a  gush  of  manliness  of  thought  within  you.  Dante  was  very 
sensible  of  his  own  excellence  in  this  particular,  and  speaks  ol 
poets  as  guardians  of  the  vast  armory  of  language,  which  is  th 
intermediate  something  between  matter  and  spirit  :— 

*  Mr.  Coleridge  here  notes : . «  I  will,  if  I  can  here  make  an  historical 
movement,  and  pay  a  proper  compliment  to  Mr.  Halkm.  -Ed. 


LECTURE  X.  293 

Or  se'  tu  quel  Virgilio,  e  quella  foute, 
Che  spande  di  parlar  si  largo  fiume  ? 
Risposi  lui  con  vergogaosa  fronte. 

0  degli  altri  poeti  onore  e  lume, 
Vagliami  '1  luugo  studio  e  '1  grande  amore, 
Che  m'  han  fatto  cercar  lo  tuo  volume. 

Tu  se'  lo  mio  maestro,  e  '1  mio  autore : 
Tu  se'  solo  colui,  da  cu'  io  falsi 
Lo  hello  stile,  che  m'  ha  fatto  onore. 

Inf.  c.  1,  v.  79. 

"And  art  thou  then  that  Virgil,  that  well-spring, 
From  which  such  copious  floods  of  eloquence 
Have  issued  ?"     I,  with  front  abash'd,  replied : 

"  Glory  and  light  of  all  the  tuneful  train  I 
May  it  avail  me,  that  I  long  with  zeal 
Have  sought  thy  volume,  and  with  love  immense 
Have  conn'd  it  o'er.     My  master,  thou,  and  guide  1 
Thou  he  from  whom  I  have  alone  derived 
That  style,  which  for  its  beauty  into  fame 
Exalts  me"  Cary 

Indeed  there  was  a  passion  and  a  miracle  of  words  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries,  after  the  long  slumber  of  language  in 
barbarism,  which  gave  an  almost  romantic  character,  a  virtuous 
quality  and  power,  to  what  was  read  in  a  book,  independently  of 
the  thoughts  or  images  contained  in  it.  This  feeling  is  very  often 
perceptible  in  Dante. 

II.  The  Images  in  Dante  are  not  only  taken  from  obvious  na- 
ture, and  are  all  intelligible  to  all,  but  are  ever  conjoined  with 
the  universal  feeling  received  from  nature,  and  therefore  affect 
the  general  feelings  of  all  men.  And  in  this  respect,  Dante's  ex- 
cellence is  very  great,  and  may  be  contrasted  with  the  idiosyn- 
crasies of  some  meritorious  modern  poets,  who  attempt  an  erudite- 
|iess,  the  result  of  particular  feelings.  Consider  the  simplicity,  I 
ay  say  plainness,  of  the  following  simile,  and  how  differently 
ve  should  in  all  probability  deal  with  it  at  the  present  day  : — 

Quale  i  fioretti  dal  notturno  gelo 
Chinati  e  chiusi,  poi  che  T  sol  gl'  imbianca, 
Si  drizzan  tutti  aperti  in  loro  stelo, — 

Fal  mi  fee'  io  di  mia  virtute  stanca : 

Inf.  c.  2,  v.  127. 

As  florets,  by  the  frosty  air  of  night 

Bent  down  and  clos'd,  when  day  has  blanch'd  their  leaves, 


294  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

Rise  all  unfolded  on  their  spiry  stems, — 
So  was  my  fainting  vigor  new  restor'd. 

Cart* 

III.  Consider  the  wonderful  profoundness  of  the  whole  third 
canto  of  the  Inferno  ;  and  especially  of  the  inscription  over  Hell- 
gate  :— 

Per  me  si  va,  &c. — 

which  can  only  be  explained  by  a  meditation  on  the  true  nature 
of  religion  ;  that  is, — reason  plus  the  understanding.  I  say  pro- 
foundness rather  than  sublimity  ;  for  Dante  does  not  so  much 
elevate  your  thoughts  as  send  them  down  deeper.  In  this  canto 
all  the  images  are  distinct,  and  even  vividly  distinct  ;  but  there 
is  a  total  impression  of  infinity  ;  the  wholeness  is  not  in  vision 
or  conception,  but  in  an  inner  feeling  of  totality,  and  absolute 
being. 

IV.  In  picturesqueness,  Dante  is  beyond  all  other  poets,  modern, 
or  ancient,  and  more  in  the  stern  style  of  Pindar,  than  of  any 
other.  Michel  Angelo  is  said  to  have  made  a  design  for  every, 
page  of  the  Divina  Commedia.  As  super-excellent  in  this  respect, 
I  would  note  the  conclusion  of  the  third  canto  of  the  Inferno  :-— 

Ed  ecco  verso  noi  venir  per  nave 
Un  vecchio  bianco  per  antico  pelo 
Gridando :  guai  a  voi  anime  prave :  (fee. 

Ver.  82,  <fcc. 

*  *  *  *         ♦  *  * 

And  io  !  toward  us  in  a  bark 
Comes  on  an  old  man,  hoary  white  with  eld, 
Crying,  "  "Woe  to  you,  wicked  spirits  !" 

****** 

Cary. 

Caron  dimonio  con  occhi  di  bragia 
Loro  accennando,  tutte  le  raccoglie  : 
Batte  col  remo  qualunque  s'  adagia. 

Come  d'  autunno  si  levan  le  foglie 
L'  una  appresso  dell'  altra,  infin  eke  1  ramo 
Rencle  alia  terra  tutte  le  sue  spoglie  ; 

Similemente  il  mal  seme  d'  Adamo, 
Gittansi  di  quel  lito  ad  una  ad  una  . 
Per  cenni,  com'  augel  per  suo  rickiamo, 

Ver.  100,  &c. 

*  Mr.  Coleridge  here  notes :  "  Here  to  speak  of  Mr.  Cary's  transla- 
tion/'— Ed. 


LECTURE  X.  295 


Charon,  demoniac  form, 

With  eyes  of  burning  coal,  collects  them  all, 
Beck'ning,  and  each  that  lingers,  with  his  oar 
Strikes.     As  fall  off  the  light  autumnal  leaves, 
One  still  another  following,  till  the  bough 
Strews  all  its  honors  on  the  earth  beneath ; — 
E'en  in  like  manner  Adam's  evil  brood 
Cast  themselves  one  by  one  down  from  the  shore 
Each  at  a  beck,  as  falcon  at  his  call.  Cary. 

And  this  passage,  which  I  think  admirably  picturesque  *. — 

Ma  poco  valse,  che  1'  ale  al  sospetto 
Non  potero  avanzar :  quegli  and6  sotto, 
E  quei  drizzo,  volando,  suso  il  petto : 

Non  altrimenti  V  anitra  di  botto, 
Quando  '1  falcon  s'  appressa,  giu  s'  attuffa, 
Ed  ei  ritorna  su  crucciato  e  rotto. 

Irato  Calcabrina  della  buffa, 
Volando  dietro  gli  tenne,  invaghito, 
Che  quei  campasse,  per  aver  la  zuffa : 

E  come  '1  barattier  fu  disparito, 
Cosi  volse  gli  artigli  al  suo  compagno, 
E  fu  con  lui  sovra  '1  fosso  ghermito. 

Ma  1'  altro  fu  bene  sparvier  grifagno 
Ad  artigliar  ben  lui,  e  amedue 
Cadder  nel  mezzo  del  bollente  stagno. 

Lo  caldo  sghermidor  subito  fue  : 
Ma  pero  di  levarsi  era  niente, 
Si  aveano  inviscate  1'  ale  sue. 

Infer,  c.  xxii.  ver.  127,  &c 

But  little  it  avail'd  :  terror  outstripp'd 
His  following  flight :  the  other  plung'd  beneath, 
And  he  with  upward  pinion  rais'd  his  breast : 
E'en  thus  the  water- fowl,  when  she  perceives 
The  falcon  near,  dives  instant  down,  while  he 
Enrag'd  and  spent  retires.     That  mockery 
In  Calcabrina  fury  stirr'd,  who  flew 
After  him,  with  desire  of  strife  inflam'd  ; 
And,  for  the  barterer  had  'scap'd,  so  turn'd 
His  talons  on  his  comrade.     O'er  the  dyke 
In  grapple  close  they  join'd ;  but  th'  other  prov'd 
A  goshawk,  able  to  rend  well  his  foe ; 
And  in  the  boiling  lake  both  fell.     The  heat 
Was  umpire  soon  between  them,  but  in  vain 
To  lift  themselves  they  strove,  so  fast  were  glued 
Their  pennons.  Cary. 


296  COUESE   OF  LECTURES. 

V.  Very  closely  connected  with  this  picturesqueness,  is  the  top- 
ographic reality  of  Dante's  journey  through  Hell.  You  should 
note  and  dwell  on  this  as  one  of  his  great  charms,  and  which 
gives  a  striking  peculiarity  to  his  poetic  power.  He  thus  takes 
the  thousand  delusive  forms  of  a  nature  worse  than  chaos,  hav- 
ing no  reality  but  from  the  passions  which  they  excite,  and  com- 
pels them  into  the  service  of  the  permanent.  Observe  the  ex- 
ceeding truth  of  these  lines  : — 

Noi  ricidemmo  '1  cerchio  all'  altra  riva, 
Sovr'  una  fonte  che  bolle,  e  riversa, 
Per  uq  fossato  che  da  lei  diriva. 

L'  aequa  era  buja  molto  piu  che  perga: 
E  noi  in  corapagnia  deli'  onde  bige 
Entrammo  giu  per  una  via  diver sa. 

Una  palude  fa,  eh'  ha  nome  Stige, 
Questo  tristo  ruscel,  quando  e  disceso 
Al  pie  delle  maligne  piagge  grige. 

Ed  io  che  di  mirar  mi  stava  inteso, — 
Vidi  genti  fangose  in  quel  pantano 
Ignude  tutte,  e  con  sembiante  offeso. 

Questi  si  percotean  non  pur  con  raano, 
Ma  con  la  testa,  e  col  petto,  e  co'  piedi, 
Troncandosi  co'  denti  a  brano  a  brano. 

***** 

Cosi  girammo  della  lorda  pozza 
Grand'  arco  tra  la  ripa  secca  e  '1  mezzo, 
Con  gli  occhi  volti  a  chi  del  fango  ingozza  : 
Venimmo  apple  cV  una  torre  al  dassezzo. 

C.  vii.  ver.  100  and  127. 

We  the  circle  cross'd 

To  the  next  steep,  arriving  at  a  well, 

That  boiling  pours  itself  down  to  a  foss 

Sluic'd  from  its  source.     Far  murkier  was  the  wave 

Than  sablest  grain :  and  we  in  company 

Of  th'  inky  waters,  journeying  by  their  side; 

Enter' d,  though  by  a  different  track,  beneath. 

Into  a  lake,  the  Stygian  nam'd,  expands 

The  dismal  stream,  when  it  hath  reach'd  the  foot 

Of  the  gray  wither'd  cliffs.     Intent  I  stood 

To  gaze,  and  in  the  marsh  sunk,  descried 

A  miry  tribe,  all  naked,  and  with  looks 

Betok'ning  rage.     They  witli  their  hands  alone 

Struck  not.  but  with  the  head,  the  breast,  the  feet, 

Cutting  each  other  piecemeal  with  their  fangs. 


LECTUKE  X.  297 


-Our  route 


Thus  compass'd,  we  a  segment  widely  stretch'd 
Between  the  dry  embankment  and  the  cove 
Of  the  loath'd  pool,  turning  meanwhile  our  eyes 
Downward  on  those  who  gulp'd  its  muddy  lees  ; 
Nor  stopp'd,  till  to  a  tower's  low  base  we  came. 

Cary. 

VI.  For  Dante's  power, — his  absolute  mastery  over,  although 
rare  exhibition  of,  the  pathetic,  I  can  do  no  more  than  refer  to 
the  passages  on  Francesca  di  Rimini  (Infer.  C.  v.  ver.  73  to  the 
end),  and  on  Ugolino  (Infer.  C.  xxxiii.  ver.  1  to  75).  They  are 
so  well  known,  and  rightly  so  admired,  that  it  would  be  pedantry 
to  analyze  their  composition  ;  but  you  will  note  that  the  first  is 
the  pathos  of  passion,  the  second  that  of  affection  ;  and  yet  even 

'  in  the  first,  you  seem  to  perceive  that  the  lovers  have  sacrificed 
their  passion  to  the  cherishing  of  a  deep  and  rememberable  im 
pression. 

VII.  As  to  going  into  the  endless  subtle  beauties  of  Dante, 
that  is  impossible  ;  but  I  can  not  help  citing  the  first  triplet  of 
the  twenty-ninth  canto  of  the  Inferno  : — 

La  molta  gente  e  le  diverse  piaghe 
Avean  le  luci  mie  si  inebriate, 
Che  dello  stare  a  piangere  eran  vaghe. 

So  were  mine  eyes  inebriate  with  the  view 
Of  the  vast  multitude,  whom  various  wounds 
Disfigur'd,  that  they  long'd  to  stay  and  weep. 

Cary. 

Nor  have  I  now  room  for  any  specific  comparison  of  Dante  with 
Milton.  But  if  I  had,  I  would  institute  it  upon  the  ground  of 
the  last  canto  of  the  Inferno  from  the  1st  to  the  69th  line,  and 
from  the  106th  to  the  end.  And  in  this  comparison  I  should 
notice  Dante's  occasional  fault  of  becoming  grotesque  from  beino- 
too  graphic  without  imagination  ;  as  in  his  Lucifer  compared 
with  Milton's  Satan.  Indeed  he  is  sometimes  horrible  rather 
than  terrible, — falling  into  the  fiiarjxbv  instead  of  the  deivop  of 
Longinus  ;*  in  other  words,  many  of  his  images  excite  bodily  dis- 
gust, and  not  moral  fear.  But  here,  as  in  other  cases,  you  may 
perceive  that  the  faults  of  great  authors  are  generally  excellencies 
carried  to  an  excess. 

*  De  Subl.  1.  ix. 


298  COUESE   OF  LECTURES. 

MILTOK 
Born  in  London,  1608.— Died,  16*74. 

If  we  divide  the  period  from  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  to  the 
Protectorate  of  Cromwell  into  two  unequal  portions,  the  first 
ending  with  the  death  of  James  I.,  the  other  comprehending  the 
reign  of  Charles  and  the  brief  glories  of  the  Republic,  we  are 
forcibly  struck  with  a  difference  in  the  character  of  the  illustrious 
actors,  by  whom  each  period  is  rendered  severally  memorable. 
Or  rather,  the  difference  in  the  characters  of  the  great  men  in 
each  period,  leads  us  to  make  this  division.  Eminent  as  the  in- 
tellectual powers  were  that  were  displayed  in  both  ;  yet  in  the 
number  of  great  men,  in  the  various  sorts  of  excellence,  and  not 
merely  in  the  variety  but  almost  diversity  of  talents  united  in  the 
same  individual,  the  age  of  Charles  falls  short  of  its  predecessor  ; 
and  the  stars  of  the  Parliament,  keen  as  their  radiance  was,  in 
fulness  and  richness  of  lustre,  yield  to  the  constellation  at  the 
court  of  Elizabeth  ; — which  can  only  be  paralleled  by  Greece  in 
her  brightest  moment,  when  the  titles  of  the  poet,  the  philoso- 
pher, the  historian,  the  statesman,  and  the  general  not  seldom 
formed  a  garland  round  the  same  head,  as  in  the  instances  of  our 
Sidneys  and  Raleighs.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was 
a  vehemence  of  will,  an  enthusiasm  of  principle,  a  depth  and  an 
earnestness  of  spirit,  which  the  charms  of  individual  fame  and 
personal  aggrandizement  could  not  pacify, — an  aspiration  after 
reality,  permanence,  and  general  good, — in  short,  a  moral  gran- 
deur in  the  latter  period,  with  which  the  low  intrigues,  Machia- 
vellic  maxims,  and  selfish  and  servile  ambition  of  the  former, 
stand  in  painful  contrast. 

The  causes  of  this  it  belongs  not  to  the  present  occasion  to  de- 
tail at  length  ;  but  a  mere  allusion  to  the  quick  succession  of 
revolutions  in  religion,  breeding  a  political  indifference  in  the 
mass  of  men  to  religion  itself,  the  enormous  increase  of  the  royal 
power  in  consequence  of  the  humiliation  of  the  nobility  and  the 
clergy — the  transference  of  the  papal  authority  to  the  crown, — 
the  unfixed  state  of  Elizabeth's  own  opinions,  whose  inclinations 
were  as  popish  as  her  interests  were  protestant — the  controver- 
sial extravagance  and  practical  imbecility  of  her  successor — will 
help  to  explain  the  former  period  ;  and  the  persecutions  that  had 


LECTURE   X.  29» 

given  a  life-and-soul-interest  to  the  disputes  so  imprudently  fos- 
tered by  James, — the  ardor  of  a  conscious  increase  of  power  in 
the  commons,  and  the  greater  austerity  of  manners  and  maxims, 
the  natural  product  and  most  formidable  weapon  of  religious  dis- 
putation, not  merely  in  conjunction,  but  in  closest  combination, 
with  newly-awakened  political  and  republican  zeal,  these  per- 
haps account  for  the  character  of  the  latter  sera. 

In  the  close  of  the  former  period,  and  during  the  bloom  of  the 
latter,  the  poet  Milton  was  educated  and  formed  ;  and  he  sur- 
vived the  latter,  and  all  the  fond  hopes  and  aspirations  which 
had  been  its  life  ;  and  so  in  evil  days,  standing  as  the  represen- 
tative of  the  combined  excellence  of  both  periods,  he  produced 
the  Paradise  Lost  as  by  an  after-throe  of  nature.  "  There  are 
some  persons"  (observes  a  divine,  a  contemporary  of  Milton's), 
I  of  whom  the  grace  of  God  takes  early  hold,  and  the  good  spirit 
inhabiting  them,  carries  them  on  in  an  even  constancy  through 
innocence  into  virtue,  their  Christianity  bearing  equal  date  with 
their  manhood,  and  reason  and  religion,  like  warp  and  woof,  run- 
ning together,  make  up  one  web  of  a  wise  and  exemplary  life. 
This  (he  adds)  is  a  most  happy  case,  wherever  it  happens  ;  for, 
besides  that  there  is  no  sweeter  or  more  lovely  thing  on  earth 
than  the  early  buds  of  piety,  which  drew  from  our  Saviour  sig- 
nal affection  to  the  beloved  disciple,  it  is  better  to  have  no  wound 
than  to  experience  the  most  sovereign  balsam,  which,  if  it  work 
a  cure,  yet  usually  leaves  a  scar  behind."  Although  it  was  and 
is  my  intention  to  defer  the  consideration  of  Milton's  own  char- 
acter to  the  conclusion  of  this  Lecture,  yet  I  could  not  prevail  on 
myself  to  approach  the  Paradise  Lost  without  impressing  on  your 
minds  the  conditions  under  which  such  a  work  was  in  fact  pro- 
ducible at  all,  the  original  genius  having  been  assumed  as  the 
immediate  agent  and  efficient  cause  ;  and  these  conditions  I  find 
in  the  character  of  the  times  and  in  his  own  character.  The 
age  in  which  the  foundations  of  his  mind  were  laid,  was  conge- 
nial to  it  as  one  golden  sera  of  profound  erudition  and  individual 
I  genius  ; — that  in  which  the  superstructure  was  carried  up,  was 
Jno  less  favorable  to  it  by  a  sternness  of  discipline  and  a  show  of 
[  Eelf-control,  highly  flattering  to  the  imaginative  dignity  of  an 
k! heir  of  fame,  and  which  won  Milton  over  from  the  dear-loved 
•  delights  of  academic  groves  and  cathedral  aisles  to  the  anti-pre- 
fatic  party.     It  acted  on  him  too,  no  doubt,  and  modified    his 


300  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

studies  by  a  characteristic  controversia.  spirit  (his  presentation 
of  God  is  tinted  with  it)— a  spirit  not  less  busy  indeed  in  politi- 
cal than  in  theological  and  ecclesiastical  dispute,  but  carrying  on 
the  former  almost  always,  more  or  less,  in  the  guise  of  the  latter. 
And  so  far  as  Pope's  censure*  of  our  poet — that  he  makes  God 
the  Father  a  school  divine— is  just,  we  must  attribute  it  to  the 
character  of  his  age,  from  which  the  men  of  genius,  who  es- 
caped, escaped  by  a  worse  disease,  the  licentious  indifference  of 
a  Frenchified  court. 

Such  was  the  nidus  or  soil  which  constituted,  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word,  the  circumstances  of  Milton's  mind.  In  his 
mind  itself  there  were  purity  and  piety  absolute  ;  an  imagination 
to  which  neither  the  past  nor  the  present  were  interesting,  ex- 
cept as  far  as  they  called  forth  and  enlivened  the  great  ideal,  in 
which  and  for  which  he  lived  ;  a  keen  love  of  truth,  which,  after 
many  weary  pursuits,  found  a  harbor  in  the  sublime  listening  to 
the  still  voice  in  his  own  spirit,  and  as  keen  a  love  of  his  coun- 
try, which,  after  a  disappointment  still  more  depressive,  expand- 
ed and  soared  into  a  love  of  man  as  a  probationer  of  immortal- 
ity. These  were,  these  alone  could  be,  the  conditions  under 
which  such  a  work  as  the  Paradise  Lost  could  be  conceived  and 
accomplished.     By  a  life-long  study  Milton  had  known— 

"What  was  of  use  to  know, 
What  best  to  say  could  say,  to  do  had  done. 
His  actions  to  his  words  agreed,  his  words 
To  his  large  heart  gave  utterance  due,  his  heart 
Coutain'd  of  good,  wise,  fair,  the  perfect  shape ; 

And  he  left  the  imperishable  total,  as  a  bequest  to  the  ages  coming, 
in  the  Paradise  LosT.f 

Difficult  as  I  shall  find  it  to  turn  over  these  leaves  without 
catching  some  passage,  which  would  tempt  me  to  stop,  I  propose 
to  consider,  1st,  the  general  plan  and  arrangement  of  the  work ; 
2dly,  the  subject  with  its  difficulties  and  advantages  ;— 3dly,  the 
poet's  object,  the  spirit  in  the  letter,  the  bp66uiou  bp  ^du>,  the  true 

*  Table  Talk,  VI.  p.  490. 

\  Here  Mr.  C.  notes :  "  Not  perhaps  here,  but  towards,  or  as,  the  conclu- 
sion, to  chastise  the  fashionable  notion  that  poetry  is  a  relaxation  or  amuse- 
ment, one  of  the  superfluous  toys  and  luxuries  of  the  intellect  1  To  contrast 
the  permanence  of  poems  with  the  transiency  and  fleeting  moral  effects  of 
empires,  and  what  are  called,  great  events." — Ed. 


LECTURE  X,  30'. 

6ohool-divinity ;  and  lastly,  the  characteristic  excellencies  of  the 
poem,  in  what  they  consist,  and  by  what  means  they  were  pro- 
duced. 

1.  As  to  the  plan  and  ordonnance  of  the  Poem. 

Compare  it  with  the  Iliad,  many  of  the  books  of  which  might 
change  places  without  any  injury  to  the  thread  of  the  story.  In- 
deed, I  doubt  the  original  existence  of  the  Iliad  as  one  poem ;  it 
seems  more  probable  that  it  was  put  together  about  the  time  of 
the  Pisistratidse.  The  Iliad — and,  more  or  less,  all  epic  poems, 
the  subjects  of  which  are  taken  from  history — have  no  rounded 
conclusion ;  they  remain,  after  all,  but  single  chapters  from  the 
volume  of  history,  although  they  are  ornamental  chapters.  Con- 
sider the  exquisite  simplicity  of  the  Paradise  Lost.  It  and  it 
alone  really  possesses  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end ;  it  has 
the  totality  of  the  poem  as  distinguished  from  the  ab  ovo  birth 
and  parentage,  or  straight  line,  of  history. 

2.  As  to  the  subject. 

In  Homer,  the  supposed  importance  of  the  subject,  as  the  first 
effort  of  confederated  Greece,  is  an  after-thought  of  the  critics , 
and  the  interest,  such  as  it  is,  derived  from  the  events  themselves, 
as  distinguished  from  the  manner  of  representing  them,  is  very 
languid  to  all  but  Greeks.  It  is  a  Greek  poem.  The  superiority 
of  the  Paradise  Lost  is  obvious  in  this  respect,  that  the  interest 
transcends  the  limits  of  a  nation.  But  we  do  not  generally 
dwell  on  this  excellence  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  because  it  seems 
attributable  to  Christianity  itself; — yet  in  fact  the  interest  is 
wider  than  Christendom,  and  comprehends  the  Jewish  and  Mo- 
hammedan worlds  ; — nay,  still  further,  inasmuch  as  it  represents 
the  origin  of  evil,  and  the  combat  of  evil  and  good,  it  contains 
matter  of  deep  interest  to  all  mankind,  as  forming  the  basis  of 
all  religion,  and  the  true  occasion  of  all  philosophy  whatso- 
ever. 

The  Fall  of  man  is  the  subject ;  Satan  is  the  cause  ;  man's 
blissful  state  the  immediate  object  of  his  enmity  and  attack  ; 
man  is  warned  by  an  angel  who  gives  him  an  account  of  all  that 
was  requisite  to  be  known,  to  make  the  warning  at  once  intelli- 
gible and  awful,  then  the  temptation  ensues,  and  the  Fall ;  then 
the  immediate  sensible  consequence  ;  then  the  consolation,  wherein 
an  angel  presents  a  vision  of  the  history  of  man  with  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  the  Redeemer.     Nothing  is  touched  in  this 


302  COUKSE   OF   LECTUKES. 

vision  but  what  is  of  general  interest  in  religion  ;  any  thing  else 
would  have  been  improper. 

The  inferiority  of  Klopstock's  Messiah  is  inexpressible.  I  admit 
the  prerogative  of  poetic  feeling,  and  poetic  faith  ;  but  I  can  not 
suspend  the  judgment  even  for  a  moment.  A  poem  may  in  one 
sense  be  a  dream,  but  it  must  be  a  waking  dream.  In  Milton 
you  h:ivre  a  religious  faith  combined  with  the  moral  nature  ;  it  is 
an  efflux  ;  you  go  along  with  it.  In  Klopstock  there  is  a  wilful- 
ness ;  he  makes  things  so  and  so.  The  feigned  speeches  and 
events  in  the  Messiah  shock  us  like  falsehoods  ;  but  nothing  of 
that  sort  is  felt  in  the  Paradise  Lost,  in  which  no  particulars,  at 
least  very  few  indeed,  are  touched  which  can  come  into  collision 
or  juxtaposition  with  recorded  matter. 

But  notwithstanding  the  advantages  in  Milton's  subject,  there 
were  concomitant  insuperable  difficulties,  and  Milton  has  exhib- 
ited marvellous  skill  in  keeping  most  of  them  out  of  sight.  High 
poetry  is  the  translation  of  reality  into  the  ideal  under  the  pre- 
dicament of  succession  of  time  only.  The  poet  is  an  historian, 
upon  condition  of  moral  power  being  the  only  force  in  the  uni- 
verse. The  very  grandeur  of  his  subject  ministered  a  difficulty 
to  Milton.  The  statement  of  a  being  of  high  intellect,  warring 
against  the  supreme  Being,  seems  to  contradict  the  idea  of  a  su- 
preme Being.  Milton  precludes  our  feeling  this,  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, by  keeping  the  peculiar  attributes  of  divinity  less  in  sight, 
making  them  to  a  certain  extent  allegorical  only.  Again  poetry 
implies  the  language  of  excitement ;  yet  how  to  reconcile  such 
language  with  God  !  Hence  Milton  confines  the  poetic  passion 
in  God's  speeches  to  the  language  of  Scripture  ;  and  once  only 
allows  the  passio  vera,  or  quasi  humana  to  appear,  in  the  passage, 
where  the  Father  contemplates  his  own  likeness  in  the  Son  before 
ihe  battle  :— 


Go  then,  thou  Mightiest,  ia  thy  Father's  might, 
Ascend  my  chariot,  guide  the  rapid  wheels 
That  shake  Heaven's  basis,  bring  forth  all  my  war, 
My  bow  and  thunder ;  my  almighty  arms 
Gird  on,  and  sword  upon  thy  puissant  thigh ; 
Pursue  these  sons  of  darkness,  drive  them  out 
From  all  Heaven's  bounds  into  the  utter  deep : 
There  let  them  learn,  as  likes  them,  to  despise 
God  and  Messiah  his  anointed  king. 

B.  vi.  v,  710. 


I 


LECTUKE   X.  308 

li.  As  to  Milton's  object : 

It  was  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man  !  The  controversial 
3pirit  observable  in  many  parts  of  the  poem,  especially  in  God's 
speeches,  is  immediately  attributable  to  the  great  controversy  of 
that  age,  the  origination  of  evil.  The  Arminians  considered  it  a 
mere  calamity.  The  Calvinists  took  away  all  human  will.  Mil- 
ton asserted  the  will,  but  declared  for  the  enslavement  of  the  will 
out  of  an  act  of  the  will  itself.  There  are  three  powers  in  us, 
which  distinguish  us  from  the  beasts  that  perish: — 1,  reason; 
2,  the  power  of  viewing  universal  truth  ;  and  3,  the  power  of 
contracting  universal  truth  into  particulars.  Religion  is  the  will 
in  the  reason,  and  love  in  the  will. 

The  character  of  Satan  is  pride  and  sensual  indulgence,  finding 
in  self  the  sole  motive  of  action.  It  is  the  character  so  often  seen 
in  little  on  the  political  stage.  It  exhibits  all  the  restlessness, 
temerity,  and  cunning  which  have  marked  the  mighty  hunters 
of  mankind  from  Nimrod  to  Napoleon.  The  common  fascination 
of  men  is,  that  these  great  men,  as  they  are  called,  must  act 
from  some  great  motive.  Milton  has  carefully  marked  in  his 
Satan  the  intense  selfishness,  the  alcohol  of  egotism,  which  would 
rather  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven.  To  place  this  lust  of 
self  in  opposition  to  denial  of  self  or  duty,  and  to  show  what  ex- 
ertions it  would  make,  and  what  pains  endure  to  accomplish  its 
end,  is  Milton's  particular  object  in  the  character  of  Satan.  But 
around  this  character  he  has  thrown  a  singularity  of  daring,  a 
jgrandeur  of  sufferance,  and  a  ruined  splendor,  which  constitute 
the  very  height  of  poetic  sublimity. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  execution  : — 

The  language  and  versification  of  the  Paradise  Lost  are  pecu- 
liar in  being  so  much  more  necessarily  correspondent  to  each  than 
[hose  in  any  other  poem  or  poet.  The  connection  of  the  sen- 
ences  and  the  position  of  the  words  are  exquisitely  artificial ;  but 
jthe  position  is  rather  according  to  the  logic  of  passion  or  universal 
Bogie,  than  to  the  logic  of  grammar.  Milton  attempted  to  make 
Uie  English  language  obey  the  logic  of  passion,  as  perfectly  as 
|he  Greek  and  Latin.  Hence  the  occasional  harshness  in  the 
^construction. 

,'  Sublimity  is  the  pre-eminent  characteristic  of  the  Paradise  Lost. 
It  is  not  an  arithmetical  sublime  like  Klopstock's,  whose  rule  al 
hivays  is  to  treat  what  we  might  think  large  as  contemptibly  smalJ 


g04  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

Klopstock  mistakes  bigness  for  greatness.  There  is  a  greatnesa 
arising  from  images  of  effort  and  daring,  and  also  from  those  of 
moral  endurance  ;  in  Milton  both  are  united.  The  fallen  angels 
are  human  passions,  invested  with  a  dramatic  reality. 

The  apostrophe  to  light  at  the  commencement  of  the  third 
book  is  particularly  beautiful  as  an  intermediate  link  between 
Hell  and  Heaven ;  and  observe,  how  the  second  and  third  book 
support  the  subjective  character  of  the  poem.  In  all  modern 
poetry  in  Christendom  there  is  an  under  consciousness  of  a  sinful 
nature,  a  fleeting  away  of  external  things,  the  mind  or  subject 
greater  than  the  object,  the  reflective  character  predominant.  In 
the  Paradise  Lost  the  sublimest  parts  are  the  revelations  of  Mil- 
ton's own  mind,  producing  itself  and  evolving  its  own  greatness; 
and  this  is  so  truly  so,  that  when  that  which  is  merely  entertain- 
ing  for  its  objective  beauty  is  introduced,  it  at  first  seems  a  dis- 
cord. , 

In  the  description  of  Paradise  itself,  you  have  Milton  s  sunny 
side  as  a  man ;  here  his  descriptive  powers  are  exercised  to  the 
utmost,  and  he  draws  deep  upon  his  Italian  resources.  In  the 
description  of  Eve,  and  throughout  this  part  of  the  poem,  the 
poet  is  predominant  over  the  theologian.  Dress  is  the  symbol  of 
the  Fall,  but  the  mark  of  intellect ;  and  the  metaphysics  of  dress 
are,  the  hiding  what  is  not  symbolic  and  displaying  by  discrimi- 
nation what  is.  The  love  of  Adam  and  Eve  in  Paradise  is  of  the 
highest  merit— not  phantomatic,  and  yet  removed  from  every 
thing  degrading.  It  is  the  sentiment  of  one  rational  being  towards 
another  made  tender  by  a  specific  difference  in  that  which  is 
essentially  the  same  in  both ;  it  is  a  union  of  opposites,  a  giving 
and  receiving  mutually  of  the  permanent  in  either,  a  completion 
of  each  in  the  other. 

Milton  is  not  a  picturesque,  but  a  musical,  poet ;  although  he 
has  this  merit,  that  the  object  chosen  by  him  for  any  particular 
foreground  always  remains  prominent  to  the  end,  enriched,  but 
not  "encumbered,  by  the  opulence  of  descriptive  details  furnished 
by  an  exhaustless  imagination.  I  wish  the  Paradise  Lost  were 
more  carefully  read  and  studied  than  I  can  see  any  ground  foi 
believing  it  is,  especially  those  parts  which,  from  the  habit  of: 
always  looking  for  a  story  in  poetry,  are  scarcely  read  at  all,— a* 
foi  example,  Adam's  vision  of  future  events  in  the  11th  and  I2t 
books.     No  one  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of  this  immortal  poen 


LECTUKE  X  30! 

without  a  deep  sense  of  the  grandeur  and  ths  purity  of  Milton's 
soul,  or  without  feeling  how  susceptible  of  domestic  enjoyments 
he  really  was,  notwithstanding  the  discomforts  which  actually 
resulted  from  an  apparently  unhappy  choice  in  marriage.  He 
was,  as  every  truly  great  poet  has  ever  been,  a  good  man  ;  but 
finding  it  impossible  to  realize  his  own  aspirations,  either  in  reli- 
gion or  politics,  or  society,  he  gave  up  his  heart  to  the  living 
spirit  and  light  within  him,  and  avenged  himself  on  the  world 
by  enriching  it  with  this  record  of  his  own  transcendent  ideal. 


NOTES  ON  MILTON.     1807* 

(Hayley  quotes  the  following  passage : — ) 

"  Time  serves  not  now,  and,  perhaps,  I  might  seem  too  profuse  to  give 
any  certain  aceount  of  what  the  mind  at  home,  in  the  spacious  circuit  of 
her  musing,  hath  liberty  to  propose  to  herself,  though  of  highest  hope  and 
hardest  attempting ;  whether  that  epic  form,  whereof  the  two  poems  of 
Homer,  and  those  other  two  of  Virgil  and  Tasso,  are  a  diffuse,  and  the 
book  of  Job  a  brief,  model!' — P.  69. 

These  latter  words  deserve  particular  notice.  I  do  not  doubt 
that  Milton  intended  his  Paradise  Lost  as  an  epic  of  the  first 
class,  and  that  the  poetic  dialogue  of  the  Book  of  Job  was  his 
model  tor  the  general  scheme  of  his  Paradise  Regained.  Readers 
would  not  be  disappointed  in  this  latter  poem,  if  they  proceeded 
to  a  perusal  of  it  with  a  proper  preconception  of  the  kind  of  inter- 
est intended  to  be  excited  in  that  admirable  work.  In  its  kind, 
it  is  the  most  perfect  poem  extant,  though  its  kind  may  be  inferior 
in  interest — being  in  its  essence  didactic — to  that  other  sort,  in 
which  instruction  is  conveyed  more  effectively,  because  less 
directly,  in  connection  with  stronger  and  more  pleasurable  emo- 
tions, and  thereby  in  a  closer  affinity  with  action.  But  might  we 
not  as  rationally  object  to  an  accomplished  woman's  conversing, 
however  agreeably,  because  it  has  happened  that  we  have  re- 
ceived a  keener  pleasure  from  her  singing  to  the  harp  ?  Si  genus 
sit  probo  et  sapienti  viro  haud  indignum,  et  si  poema  sit  in  suo 
genere  perfectum,  satis  est.     Quod  si  hoc  auctor  idem  altioribus 

*  These  notes  were  written  by  Mr.  Coleridge  in  a  copy  of  Hayley 's  Life 
of  Milton  (4to.  1796),  belonging  to  Mr.  Poole.  By  him  they  were  communi- 
cated, and  this  seems  the  fittest  place  for  their  publication.— Ed. 


30G  COURSE   OF   LECTURES-  . 

numeris  et  carmini  diviniori  ipsum  per  se  divinum  supoad' 
diderit,  mehercule  satis  est,  et  plusquavn  satis.  I  can  not,  how- 
ever, but  wish  that  the  answrer  of  Jesus  to  Satan  in  the  4th  book, 
(v.  285)— 

Think  not  but  that  I  know  these  things ;  or  think 
I  kn>w  them  not,  not  therefore  am  I  short 
Of  knowing  what  I  ought,  &c. 

had  breathed  the  spirit  of  Hayley's  noble  quotation  rather  than 
the  narrow  bigotry  of  Gregory  the  Great.  The  passage  is,  indeed, 
excellent,  and  is  partially  true  ;  but  partial  truth  is  the  worst 
mode  of  conveying  falsehood. 

Hayley,  p.  'To.  "The  sincerest  friends  of  Milton  may  here  agree  with 
Johnson,  who  speaks  of  his  controversial  merriment  as  disgusting." 

The  man  who  reads  a  wrork  meant  for  immediate  effect  on  one 
age  with  the  notions  and  feelings  of  another,  may  be  a  refined 
gentleman,  but  must  be  a  sorry  critic.  He  who  possesses  imagi- 
nation enough  to  live  with  his  forefathers,  and,  leaving  compara- 
tive reflection  for  an  after-moment,  to  give  himself  up  during  the 
first  perusal  to  the  feelings  of  a  contemporary,  if  not  a  partisan, 
will,  I  dare  aver,  rarely  find  any  part  of  Milton's  prose  works 
disgusting. 

(Hayley,  p.  104.  Hayley  is  speaking  of  the  passage  in  Milton's 
Answer  to  Icon  Basilice,  in  wbich  he  accuses  Charles  of  taking 
his  Prayer  in  captivity  from  Pamela's  prayer  in  the  3d  book  of 
Sidney's  Arcadia.     The  passage  begins, — 

"  But  this  king,  not  content  with  that  which,  although  in  a  thing  holy,  ia 
no  holy  theft,  to  attribute  to  his  own  making  other  men's  whole  prayers." 
&g.     Symmons'  ed...  1806,  p.  407.) 

Assuredly,  I  regret  that  Milton  should  have  Avritten  this  pass- 
age ,"  and  yet  the  adoption  of  a  prayer  from  a  romance  on  such 
an  occasion  does  not  evince  a  delicate  or  deeply  sincere  mind. 
We  are  the  creatures  of  association.  There  are  some  excellent 
moral  and  even  serious  lines  in  Hudibras  ;  but  what  if  a  clergy- 
man should  adorn  his  sermon  with  a  quotation  from  that  poem ! 
"Would  the  abstract  propriety  of  the  verses  leave  him  "honorably 
acquitted?"  The  Christian  baptism  of  a  line  in  Virgil  is  so  far 
from  being  a  parallel,  that  it  is  ridiculously  inappropriate. —  an 


LECTURE   X.  307 

absurdity  as  glaring  as  that  of  the  bigoted  Puritans,  who  objected 
to  some  of  the  noblest  and  most  scriptural  prayers  ever  dictated 
by  wisdom  and  piety,  simply  because  the  Roman  Catholics  had 
used  them. 

Hayley,  p.  107.     "  The  ambition  of  Milton,"  &c. 

I  do  not  approve  the  so  frequent  use  of  this  word  relatively  to 
Milton.  Indeed  the  fondness  for  ingrafting  a  good  sense  on  the 
word  "ambition,"  is  not  a  Christian  impulse  in  general. 

Hayley,  p.  110.  "Milton  himself  seems  to  have  thought  it  allowable  iu 
literary  contention  to  vilify,  &e.  the  character  of  an  opponent;  but  surely 
this  doctrine  is  unworthy,"  &o. 

If  ever  it  were  allowable,  in  this  case  it  was  especially  so.  But 
these  general  observations,  without  meditation  on  the  particular 
times  and  the  genius  of  the  times,  are  most  often  as  unjust  as 
they  are  always  superficial. 

(Hayley,  p.  133.  Hayley  is  speaking  of  Milton's  panegyric  on 
Cromwell's  government : — ) 

Besides,  however  Milton  might  and  did  regret  the  immediate 
necessity,  yet  what  alternative  was  there  ?  Was  it  not  better 
that  Cromwell  should  usurp  power,  to  protect  religious  freedom 
at  least,  than  that  the  Presbyterians  should  usurp  it  to  introduce 
a  religious  persecution, — extending  the  notion  of  spiritual  concerns 
so  far  as  to  leave  no  freedom  even  to  a  man's  bedchamber  ? 

(Hayley,  p.  250.  Hayley's  conjectures  on  the  origin  of  the 
Paradise  Lost : — ) 

If  Milton  borrowed  a  hint  from  any  writer,  it  was  more  prob- 
ably from  Strada's  Prolusions,  in  which  the  Fall  of  the  Angels  is 
pointed  out  as  the  noblest  subject  for  a  Christian  poet.^  The 
more  dissimilar  the  detailed  images  are,  the  more  likely  it  is  that 
a  great  genius  should  catch  the  general  idea. 

*  The  reference  seems  generally  to  be  to  the  5th  Prolusion  of  the  1st 
Book.  Hie  arcus  hac  tela,  quibus  olim  in  magno  illo  Superum  tumultu 
princeps  armorum  Michael  confixit  auctorem  proditionis ;  hie  fulmina 
huraancB  mentis  terror,  *  *,  *  ■  *  In,  nubibus  armatas  bello  legiones 
instruam,  atque  inde  pro  re  nata  auxiliares  ad  terrain  copias  evocabo. 
*****  jjic  mi},i  Qcelites,  quos  ease  ferunt  elementorum  tutelares, 
prima  ilia  corpora  mucebunt. — Sec,  4. — Ed. 


308  COUESE   OF  LECTURES. 

(Hayl.  p.  294.     Extracts  from  the  Adamo  of  Andreini  :, 

"  Lucifero.  Che  dal  mio  centro  oscuro 

Mi  chiama  a  rimirar  cotanta  luce  ? 

Who  from  my  dark  abyss 

Calls  me  to  gaze  on  this  excess  of  light  P 

The  words  in  italics  are  an  unfair  translation.  They  may  sug- 
gest that  Milton  really  had  read  and  did  imitate  this  drama.  The 
original  is,  '  in  so  great  light.'  Indeed  the  whole  version  is  af- 
fectedly and  inaccurately  Miltonic. 

lb.  v.  11.  Che  di  fango  opre  festi — 

Forming  thy  works  of  dust  (no,  dirt) 

lb.  v.  1*7.  Tessa  pur  stella  a  stella, 

V  aggiunga  e  luna,  e  sole. — 

Let  him  unite  above 

Star  upon  star,  moon,  sun. 

Let  him  weave  star  to  star, 
Then  join  both  moon  and  sun  ! 

lb.  v.  21.  Ch  'al  fin  eon  biasmo  e  seorno 

Vana  l'opra  sara,  vano  il  sudore  ! 

Since  in  the  end  division 

Shall  prove  his  works  and  all  his  efforts  vain. 

Since  finally  with  censure  and  disdain 

Vain  shall  the  work  be,  and  his  toil  be  vain  ! 

179G.* 

The  reader  of  Milton  must  be  always  on  his  duty :  he  is  sur- 
rounded with  sense  ;  it  rises  in  every  line  ;  every  word  is  to  the 
purpose.  There  are  no  lazy  intervals  ;  all  has  been  considered, 
and  demands  and  merits  observation.  If  this  be  called  obscurity, 
let  it  be  remembered  that  it  is  such  an  obscurity  as  is  a  compli- 
ment to  the  reader ;  not  that  vicious  obscurity,  which  proceeds 
from  a  muddled  head. 

*  From  a  common-place  book  of  Mr.  C  s,  communicated  by  Mr.  J.  M. 
GutcL—  Ed. 


LECTURE  XL* 

ASIATIC     AND     GREEK     MYTHOLOGIES — ROBINSON     CRUSOE USE     OJ? 

WORKS    OF    IMAGINATION    IN    EDUCATION. 

A  confounding  of  God  with  Nature,  and  an  incapacity  of  find- 
ing unity  in  the  manifold  and  infinity  in  the  individual, — these 
are  the  origin  of  polytheism.  The  most  perfect  instance  of  this 
kind  of  theism  is  that  of  early  Greece  ;  other  nations  seem  to  have 
either  transcended,  or  come  short  of,  the  old  Hellenic  standard, — 
a  mythology  in  itself  fundamentally  allegorical,  and  typical  of 
the  powers  and  functions  of  nature,  but  subsequently  mixed  up 
with  a  deification  of  great  men  and  hero-worship, — so  that  finally 
the  original  idea  became  inextricably  combined  with  the  form 
and  attributes  of  some  legendary  individual.  In  Asia,  probably 
from  the  greater  unity  of  the  government  and  the  still  surviving 
influence  of  patriarchal  tradition,  the  idea  of  the  unity  of  God,  in 
a  distorted  reflection  of  the  Mosaic  scheme,  was  much  more  gen- 
erally preserved  ;  and  accordingly  all  other  super  or  ultra-human 
beings  could  only  be  represented  as  ministers  of,  or  rebels  against, 
his  will.  The  Asiatic  genii  and  fairies  are,  therefore,  always  en- 
dowed with  moral  qualities,  and  distinguishable  as  malignant  or 
benevolent  to  man.  It  is  this  uniform  attribution  of  fixed  moral 
qualities  to  the  supernatural  agents  of  eastern  mythology  that 
particularly  separates  them  from  the  divinities  of  old  Greece. 

Yet  it  is  not  altogether  improbable  that  in  the  Samothracian 
or  Cabeiric  mysteries  the  link  between  the  Asiatic  and  Greek 
popular  schemes  of  mythology  lay  concealed.  Of  these  mysteries 
'  there  are  conflicting  accounts,  and,  perhaps,  there  were  variations 
of  doctrine  in  the  lapse  of  ages  and  intercourse  with  other  sys- 
tems.    But,  upon  a  review  of  all  that  is  left  to  us  on  this  subject 

*  Partly  from  Mr.  Green's  note. — Ed. 

Compare  with  the  doctrine  of  this  lecture,  Schelling's  Ueber  die  Gott- 
heiten  von  Samothrace,  and  Creutzer's  criticism  of  it,  together  with  his  own 
account  of  the  eldest  religion  of  Greece  :  Symbolik,  Secftstes  Capitel.  Werkcv 
2  Th.  53,  30^377.— Am.  Ed. 


310  COURSE    OF   LECTURES. 

in  the  writings  of  the  ancients,  we  may,  I  think,  make  out  thug 
much  of  an  interesting  fact, — that  Cabiri,  impliedly  at  least, 
meant  socii,  complices,  having  a  hypostatic  or  fundamental  union 
with,  or  relation  to,  each  other ;  that  these  mysterious  divinities 
were,  ultimately  at  least,  divided  into  a  higher  and  lower  triad  ; 
that  the  lower  triad,  primi  quia  iiifimi,  consisted  of  the  old 
Titanic  deities  or  powers  of  nature,  under  the  obscure  names  of 
Axieros,  Axiokersos  and  Axiokersa,  representing  symbolically 
different  modifications  of  animal  desire  or  material  action,  such  as 
hunger,  thirst,  and  fire,  without  consciousness  ;  that  the  higher 
triad,  ultimz  quia  superiores,  consisted  of  Jupiter  (Pallas,  or 
Apollo,  or  Bacchus,  or  Mercury,  mystically  called  Cadmilos)  and 
Venus,  representing,  as  before,  the  vov;  or  reason,  the  Xoyog  or  word 
or  communicative  power,  and  the  toot;  or  love  ;  that  the  Cad- 
milos or  Mercury,  they  manifested,  communicated,  or  sent,  appear- 
ed not  on]y  in  his  proper  person  as  second  of  the  higher  triad,  but 
also  as  a  mediator  between  the  higher  and  lower  triad,  and  so 
there  were  seven  divinities  ;  and,  indeed,  according  to  some  au- 
thorities, it  might  seem  that  the  Cadmilos  acted  once  as  a  medi- 
ator of  the  higher,  and  once  of  the  lower,  triad,  and  that  so 
there  were  eight  Cabeiric  divinities.  The  lower  or  Titanic 
powers  being  subdued,  chaos  ceased,  and  creation  began  in  the 
reign  of  the  divinities  of  mind  and  love  ;  but  the  chaotic  gods  still 
existed  in  the  abyss,  and  the  notion  of  evoking  them  was  the 
origin,  the  idea,  of  the  Greek  necromancy. 

These  mysteries,  like  all  the  others,  were  certainly  in  connec- 
tion with  either  the  Phoenician  or  Egyptian  systems,  perhaps 
with  both.  Hence  the  old  Cabeiric  powers  were  soon  made  to 
answer  the  corresponding  popular  divinities  ;  and  the  lower  triad 
was  called  by  the  uninitiated,  Ceres,  Vulcan,  or  Pluto,  and  Pros- 
erpine, and  the  Cadmilos  became  Mercury.  It  is  not  without 
ground  that  I  direct  your  attention,  under  these  circumstances  to 
the  probable  derivation  of  some  portion  of  this  most  remarkable 
system  from  patriarchal  tradition,  and  to  the  connection  of  the 
Cabeiri  with  the  Kabbala. 

The  Samothracian  mysteries  continued  in  celebrity  till  some 
time  after  the  commencement  of  the  Christian   era.#     But  they 

*  In  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  A.D.  18,  Germanicus  attempted  tc  visit 
Samothrace : — ilium  in  regressu  sacra  Samothracum  viaere  nitentem  ohm 
aquikmcs  dcpulere.     Tacit.  Ann.  ii.  e.  54. — Ed. 


LECTURE  XI.  3H 

gradually  sank  with  the  rest  of  the  ancient  system  of  mythology, 
to  which,  in  fact,  they  did  not  properly  belong.  Tne  peculiar 
doctrines,  however,  were  preserved  in  the  memories  of  the  initia 
ted,  and  handed  down  by  individuals.  No  doubt  they  were  prop- 
agated in  Europe,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  Paracelsus  re- 
ceived many  of  his  opinions  from  such  persons,  and  I  think  a 
connection  maybe  traced  between  him  and  Jacob  Behmen. 

The  Asiatic  supernatural  beings  are  all  produced  by  imagining 
an  excessive  magnitude,  or  an  excessive  smallness  combined  with 
great   power ;  and  the  broken  associations,  which   must   have 
given  rise  to   such  conceptions,  are  the  sources  of  the  interest 
which  they  inspire,  as  exhibiting,  through  the   working  of  the 
imagination,  the  idea  of  power  in  the  will.     This  is  delightfully 
exemplified  in  the  Arabian  Nights'  Entertainments,  and°indeed, 
more  or  less,  in  other  works  of  the  same  kind.    In  all  these  there 
is  the  same  activity  of  mind  as  in  dreaming,  that  is— an  exertion 
of  the  fancy  in  the   combination  and  recombination  of  familiar 
objects  so  as  to  produce  novel  and  wonderful  imagery.     To  this 
must  be  added  that  these  tales  cause  no  deep  feeling  of  a  moral 
kind— whether  of  religion  or  love  ;  but  an  impulse  of  motion  is 
communicated  to  the  mind  without  excitement,  and  this  is  the 
reason  of  their  being  so  generally  read  and  admired. 
'  I  think  it  not  unlikely  that  the  Milesian  Tales  contained  the 
germs  of  many  of  those  now  in  the  Arabian  Nights ;  indeed  it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  doubt  that  the  Greek  Empire  must  have  left 
deep  impression  on  the  Persian  intellect.      So  also  many  of  the 
'.Roman  Catholic  legends  are  taken  from  Apuleius.     In  that  ex- 
quisite story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  the  allegory  is  of  no  injury  to 
the  dramatic  vividness  of  the  tale.     It  is  evidently  a  philosophic 
attempt  to  parry  Christianity  with  a  ^^-Platonic  account  of 
the  fall  and  redemption  of  the  soul. 

The  charm  of  De  Foe's  works,  especially  of  Robinson  Crusoe 
Js  founded  on  the  same  principle.  It  always  interests,  never  agi- 
tates. Crusoe  himself  is  merely  a  representative  of  humanity  In 
general ;  neither  his  intellectual  or  his  moral  qualities  set  him 
ibove  the  middle  degree  of  mankind  ;  his  only  prominent  char- 
acteristic is  the  spirit  of  enterprise  and  wandering,  which  is, 
Nevertheless,  a  very  common  disposition.  You  will  observe  that 
|11  that  is  wonderful  in  this  tale  is  the  result  of  external  circum- 
tances— of  things  which  fortune  brings  to  Crusoe's  hand. 


8l2  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 


NOTES  ON  ROBINSON  CRUSOE* 


Vol  i  p  17  But  my  ill  fate  pushed  me  on  now  with  an  obstinacy  that 
nothing  could  resist;  and  though  I  had  several  times  loud  calls  from  my 
reason,  and  my  more  composed  judgment  to  go  home,  yet  I  had  no  power 
to  do  it  I  know  not  what  to  call  this,  nor  will  I  urge  that  it  is  a  secret 
over-ruling  decree  that  hurries  us  on  to  be  the  instruments  of  our  own 
destruction,  even  though  it  be  before  us,  and  that  we  rush  upon  it  with  our 
eyes  open. 

The  wise  only  possess  ideas  ;  the  greater  part  of  mankind 
arc  possessed  by  them.  Robinson  Crusoe  was  not  conscious  of 
the  master-impulse,  even  because  it  was  his  master,  and  had 
taken,  as  he  says,  full  possession  of  him.  When  once  the  mind, 
in  despite  of  the  remonstrating  conscience,  has  abandoned  its 
free  power  to  a  haunting  impulse  or  idea,  then  whatever  tends  to 
give  depth  and  vividness  to  this  idea  or  indefinite  imagination, 
increases  its  despotism,  and  in  the  same  proportion  renders  the 
reason  and  free  will  ineffectual.  Now,  fearful  calamities,  suffer- 
ings,  horrors,  and  hair-breadth  escapes  will  have  this  effect,  far 
more  than  even  sensual  pleasure  and  prosperous  incidents.  Hence 
the  evil  consequences  of  sin  in  such  cases,  instead  of  retracting 
or  deterring  the  sinner,  goad  him  on  to  his  destruction.  This  is 
the  moral  of  Shakspeare's  Macbeth,  and  the  true  solution  of  this 
paragraph,— not  any  overruling  decree  of  divine  wrath,  but  the 
tyranny  of  the  sinner's  own  evil  imagination,  which  he  has  vol- 
untarily chosen  as  his  master. 

Compare  the  contemptuous  Swift  with  the  contemned  De  Foe, 
and  how  superior  will  the  latter  be  found  !  Hut  by  what  test  1 
—Even  by  this  ;  that  the  writer  who  makes  me  sympathize 
with  his  presentations  with  the  whole  of  my  being,  is  more 
estimable  than  he  who  calls  forth,  and  appeals  but  to,  a  part  of 
my  being— my  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  for  instance.  De  Foe's 
excellence  it  is,  to  make  me  forget  my  specific  class,  character 
and  circumstances,  and  to  raise  me  while  I  read  him,  into  the, 
universal  man. 

P.  80.     I  smiled  to  myself  at  tl  e  sight  of  this  money :  "  0  drug  !"  said 

*  These  notes  were  written  by  Mr.  C.  in  Mr.  Gillman's  copy  of  Robin** 
Crusoe,  in  the  summer  of  1830.  The  references  in  the  text  are  to  Major- • 
edition.  IBSl.—JSd, 


LECTURE  XI.  313 

aloud,  <fcc.     However,  upon  second  thoughts,  I  took  it  away ;  and  wrapping 
all  this  in  a  piece  of  canvass,  &c. 

"Worthy  of  Shakspeare  !— and  yet  the  simple  semicolon  after  it, 
the  instant  passing  on  without  the  least  pause  of  reflex  conscious- 
ness, is  more  exquisite  and  masterlike  than  the  touch  itself.  A 
meaner  writer,  a  Marmontel,  would  have  put  an  (!)  after  <  away' 
and  have  commenced  a  fresh  paragraph.     30th  July,  1830. 

P.  111.  And  I  must  confess,  my  religious  thankfulness  to  God's  provi- 
dence began  to  abate  too,  upon  the  discovering  that  aU  this  was  nothing 
but  what  was  common ;  though  I  ought  to  have  been  as  thankful  for  so 
strange  and  unforeseen  a  providence,  as  if  it  had  been  miraculous. 

To  make  men  feel  the  truth  of  this  is  one  characteristic  ob- 
ject of  the  miracles  worked  by  Moses  ;— in  them  the  providence 
is  miraculous,  the  miracles  providential, 

P.  126.  The  growing  up  of  the  corn,  as  is  hinted  in  my  Journal,  had,  at 
first,  some  little  influence  upon  me,  and  began  to  affect  me  with  seriousness, 
as  long  as  I  thought  it  had  something  miraculous  in  it,  <fcc. 

By  far  the  ablest  vindication  of  miracles  which  I  have  met 
with.  It  is  indeed  the  true  ground,  the  proper  purpose  and  in- 
tention of  a  miracle. 

P.  141.  To  think  that  this  was  all  my  oAvn,  that  I  was  king  aud  lord 
of  all  this  country  indefeasibly,  &c. 

By  the  by,  what  is  the  law  of  England  respecting  this  ? 
Suppose  I  had  discovered,  or  been  wrecked  on  an  uninhabited 
island,  would  it  be  mine  or  the  kino-'s  ? 

o 

.  P.  223.  I  considered— that  as  I  could  not  foresee  what  the  ends  of  di- 
vine Avisdom  might  be  in  aU  this,  so  I  was  not  to  dispute  his  sovereignty, 
who,  as  I  was  his  creature,  had  an  undoubted  right,  by  creation,  to  govern 
and  dispose  of  me  absolutely  as  he  thought  fit,  &q. 

I  could  never  understand  this  reasoning,  grounded  on  a  com- 
plete misapprehension  of  St.  Paul's  image  of  the  potter,  Rom. 
ix.,  or  rather  I  do  fully  understand  the  absurdity  of  it.  The 
susceptibility  of  pain  and  pleasure,  of  good  and  evil,  constitutes  a 
right  in  every  creature  endowed  therewith  in  relation  to  every 
rational  and  moral  being,— a  fortiori,  therefore,  to  the  Supreme 
Reason,  to  the  absolutely  good  Being.  Remember  Davenant's 
verses  : — 

vol.  iv  O 


3U  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

Doth  it  our  reason's  mutinies  appease 
To  say,  the  potter  may  his  own  clay  mould 
To  every  use,  or  in  what  shape  he  please, 
At  first  not  counsell'd,  nor  at  last  eontroll'd  ? 

Power's  hand  can  neither  easy  be,  nor  strict 
To  lifeless  clay,  which  ease  nor  torment  knows, 
And  where  it  can  not  favor  or  afflict, 
It  neither  justice  or  injustice  shows. 

But  souls  have  life,  and  life  eternal  too : 
Therefore  if  doom'd  before  they  can  offend, 
It  seems  to  show  what  heavenly  power  can  do, 
But  does  not  in  that  deed  that  power  commend. 

Death  of  Astragon,  st.  88,  &e. 

P.  232-3.  And  this  I  must  observe  with  grief  too,  that  the  discomposure 
of  my  mind  had  too  great  impressions  also  upon  the  religious  parts  of  my 
thoughts, — praying  to  God  being  properly  an  act  of  the  mind,  not  of  the 
body. 

As  justly  conceived  as  it  is  beautifully  expressed.  And  a 
mighty  motive  for  habitual  prayer  ;  for  this  can  not  but  greatly 
facilitate  the  performance  of  rational  prayer  even  in  moments  of 
urgent  distress. 

P.  244.  That  this  would  justify  the  conduct  of  the  Spaniards  in  all  their 
barbarities  practised  in  America. 

De  Foe  was  a  true  philanthropist,  who  had  risen  above  the 
antipathies  of  nationality  ;  but  he  was  evidently  partial  to  the 
Spanish  character,  which,  however,  it  is  not,  I  fear,  possible  to 
acquit  of  cruelty.  Witness  the  Netherlands,  the  Inquisition,  the 
late  Guerilla  warfare,  &c. 

P.  249.  That  I  shall  not  discuss,  and  perhaps  can  not  account  for  ;  but 
certainly  they  are  a  proof  of  the  converse  of  spirits,  &c. 

This  reminds  me  of  a  conversation  I  once  overheard.  "  How 
a  statement  so  injurious  to  Mr.  A.  and  so  contrary  to  the  truth, 
should  have  been  made  to  you  by  Mr.  B.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
account  for  ; — only  I  know  of  my  own  knowledge  that  B.  is 
an  inveterate  liar,  and  has  long  borne  malice  against  Mr.  A. ; 
and  I  can  prove  that  he  has  repeatedly  declared  that  in  some 
way  or  other  he  would  do  Mr.  A.  a  mischief." 

P.  254.     The  place  I  was  in  was  a  most  delightful  cavity  or  grotto  of  it» 


LECTURE   XL  31S 

kind,  as  could  be  expected,  though  perfectly  dark ;  the  floor  was  dry  and 
level,  aud  had  a  sort  of  small  loose  gravel  on  it,  &c. 

How  accurate  an  observer  of  nature  De  Foe  was  !  The  reader 
will  at  once  recognize  Professor  Buckland's  caves  and  the  diluvial 
'gravel. 

P.  308.     I  entered  into  a  long  discourse  with  him  about  the  devil,  the 
!   original  of  him,  his  rebellion  against  God,  his  enmity  to  man,  the  reason  of 
it,  his  setting  himself  up  in  the  dark  parts  of  the  world  to  be  worshipped 
instead  of  God,  <fcc. 

I  presume  that  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  must  have  been  bound 
up  with  one  of  Crusoe's  Bibles  ;  otherwise  I  should  be  puzzled 
to  know  where  he  found  all  this  history  of  the  Old  Gentleman. 
Not  a  word  of  it  in  the  Bible  itself,  I  am  quite  sure.  But  to  be 
serious.  De  Foe  did  not  reflect  that  all  these  difficulties  are 
attached  to  a  mere  fiction,  or,  at  the  best,  an  allegory,  supported 
by  a  few  popular  phrases  and  figures  of  speech  used  incidentally 
or  dramatically  by  the  Evangelists,— and  that  the  existence  of 
a  personal,  intelligent,  evil  being,  the  counterpart  and  antag- 
onist of  God,  is  in  direct  contradiction  to  the  most  express  decla- 
rations of  Holy  Writ.  "  Shall  there  be  evil  in  a  city,  and  the 
Lord  hath  not  done  it  ?"  Amos  iii.  6.  "  I  make  peace  and 
create  evil."  Isa.  xlv.  7.  This  is  the  deep  mystery  of  the  abyss 
of  God. 

Vol.  ii.  p.  3.  I  have  often  heard  persons  of  good  judgment  say,  *  *  * 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  spirit  appearing,  a  ghost  walking  and  the 
like,  <fcc. 

I  can  not  conceive  a  better  definition  of  Body  than  "  spirit  ap- 
pearing," or  of  a  flesh-and-blood  man  than  a  rational  spirit  appa- 
rent. But  a  spirit  per  se  appearing,  is  tantamount  to  a  spirit 
appearing  without  its  appearances.  And  as  for  ghosts,  it  is 
enough  for  a  man  of  common  sense  to  observe,  that  a  ghost  and 
a  shadow  are  concluded  in  the  same  definition,  that  is,  visibility 
without  tangibility. 

P.  9.  She  was,  in  a  few  words,  the  stay  of  all  my  affairs,  the  centre  of 
all  my  enterprises,  &q. 

The  stay  of  his  affairs,  the  centre  of  his  interests,  the  regulator 
sf  his  schemes  and  movements,  whom  it  soothed  his  pride  to 
submit  to,  and  in  complying  with  whose  wishes  the  conscious 


3X0  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

sensation  of  his  acting  will  increased  the  impulse,  while  it  (lis- 
guised  the  coercion,  of  duty  '.—the  clinging  dependent,  yet  the 
strong  supporter— the  comforter,  the  comfort,  and  the  soul's  hv- 
ino-  home  !  This  is  De  Foe's  comprehensive  character  of  the 
wtfe,  as  she  should  be  ;  and,  to  the  honor  of  womanhood  be  it 
spoken,  there  are  few  neighborhoods  in  which  one  name  at  least 
might  not  be  found  for  the  portrait. 

The  exquisite  paragraphs  in  this  and  the  next  page,  in  addi- 
tion to  others  scattered,  though  with  a  sparing  hand,  through  his 
novels,  afford  sufficient  proof  that  De  Foe  was  a  first-rate  master 
of  periodic  style  ;  but  with  sound  judgment,  and  the  fine  tact  of 
genius,  he  has  avoided  it  as  adverse  to,  nay,  incompatible  with, 
the  every-day  matter-of-fact  realness,  which  form  the  charm  and 
the  character  of  all  his  romances.  The  Robinson  Crusoe  is  like 
the  vision  of  a  happy  night-mair,  such  as  a  denizen  of  Elysium 
might  be  supposed  to  have  from  a  little  excess  in  his  nectar  and 
ambrosia  supper.  Our  imagination  is  kept  in  full  play,  excited 
to  the  highest ;  yet  all  the  while  we  are  touching,  or  touched  by, 
common  flesh  and  blood. 

P.  67.  The  ungrateful  creatures  began  to  be  as  insolent  and  troublesome 
as  before,  &c. 

How  should  it  be  otherwise  ?  They  were  idle  ;  and  when  we 
will  not  sow  corn,  the  devil  will  be  sure  to  sow  weeds,  night 
shade,  henbane,  and  devil's  bit. 

P.  82.  That  hardened  villain  was  so  far  from  .  denying  it,  that  he  said  it 

was  true,  and him  they  would  do  it  still  before  they  had  done 

with  them. 

Observe  when  a  man.  has  once  abandoned  himself  to  wicked- 
ness, he  can  not  stop,  and  does  not  join  the  devils  till  he  has  be- 
come a  devil  himself.  Rebelling  against  his  conscience  he  be- 
,  comes  the  slave  of  his  own  furious  will. 

One  excellence  of  De  Foe,  amongst  many,  is  his  sacrifice  of 
lesser  interest  to  the  greater  because  more  universal.  Had  he 
(as  without  any  improbability  he  might  have  done)  given  his 
Robinson  Crusoe  any  of  the  turn  for  natural  history,  which  forms 
so  striking  and  delightful  a  feature  in  the  equally  uneducated 
Dampier ;— had  he  made  him  find  out  qualities  and  uses  in  the 
before  (to  him)  unknown  plants  of  the  island,  discover,  for  in« 


LECTUEE   XI.  317 

stance  a  substitute  for  hops,  or  describe  birds,  &e. — many  delight- 
ful pages  and  incidents  might  have  enriched  the  book  ; — but  then 
Crusoe  would  have  ceased  to  be  the  universal  representative,  the 
person  for  whom  every  reader  could  substitute  himself.  But  now 
nothing  is  done,  thought,  suffered,  or  desired,  but  what  every 
man  can  imagine  himself  doing,  thinking,  feeling,  or  wishing  for. 
Even  so  very  easy  a  problem  as  that  of  finding  a  substitute  for 
ink,  is  with  exquisite  judgment  made  to  baffle  Crusoe's  inventive 
faculties.  And  in  what  he  does,  he  arrives  at  no  excellence  ;  he 
does  not  make  basket-work  like  Will  Atkins  ;  the  carpentering, 
tailoring,  pottery,  &c,  are  all  just  what  will  answer  his  pur- 
poses, and  those  are  confined  to  needs  that  all  men  have,  and 
comforts -that  all  men  desire.  Crusoe  rises  only  to  the  point  to 
which  all  men  may  be  made  to  feel  that  they  might,  and  that 
they  ought  to,  rise  in  religion — to  resignation,  dependence  on,  and 
thankful  acknowledgment  of,  the  divine  mercy  and  goodness. 


In  the  education  of  children,  love  is  first  to  be  instilled,  and  out 
of  love  obedience  is  to  be  educed.  Then  impulse  and  power 
should  be  given  to  the  intellect,  and  the  ends  of  a  moral  being  be 
exhibited.  For  this  object  thus  much  is  effected  by  works  of 
imagination  ; — that  they  carry  the  mind  out  of  self,  and  show  the 
I  possible  of  the  good  and  the  great  in  the  human  character.  The 
!  height,  whatever  it  may  be,  of  the  imaginative  standard  will  do 
jno  harm;  we  are  commanded  to  imitate  one  who  is  inimitable. 
I  We  should  address  ourselves  to  those  faculties  in  a  child's  mind, 
iwhich  are  first  awakened  by  nature,  and  consequently  first  admit 
of  cultivation,  that  is  to  say,  the  memory  and  the  imagination.* 
The  comparing  power,  the  judgment,  is  not  at  that  age  active, 
and  ought  not  to  be  forcibly  excited,  as  is  too  frequently  and  mis- 
takenly done  in  the  modern  systems  of  education,  which  can  only 
lead  to  selfish  views,  debtor  and  creditor  principles  of  virtue,  and 
an  inflated  sense  of  merit.     In  the  imagination  of  man  exist  the 

■  He  (Sir  W.  Scott)  "  detested  and  despised  the  whole  generation  of 
nodern  children's  books  in  which  the  attempt  is  made  to  convey  accurate 
lotions  of  scientific  minutiae,  delighting  cordially  on  the  other  hand  in  those 
>f  the  preceding  age,  which  addressing  themselves  chiefly  to  the  imagina- 
ion  obtain  through  it,  as  he  believed,  the  best  chance  of  stirring  our  graver 
acuities  also ."— Life  of  Scott 


318  COUBSE   OF   LECTUKES. 

seeds  of  all  moral  and  scientific  improvement ;  chemistry  was 
first  alchemy,  and  out  of  astrology  sprang  astronomy.  In  the 
childhood  of  those  sciences  the  imagination  opened  a  way,  and 
furnished  materials,  on  which  the  ratiocinative  powers  in  a  ma- 
turer  state  operated  with  success.  The  imagination  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  of  man  as  a  progressive  being  ;  and  I 
repeat  that  it  ought  to  be  carefully  guided  and  strengthened  as 
the  indispensable  means  and  instrument  of  continued  ameliora- 
tion and  refinement.  Men.  of  genius  and  goodness  are  generally 
restless  in  their  minds  in  the  present,  and  this,  because  they  are 
by  a  law  of  their  nature  unremittingly  regarding  themselves  in 
the  future,  and  contemplating  the  possible  of  moral  and  intellec- 
tual advance  towards  perfection.  Thus  we  live  by  hope  and 
faith  ;  thus  we  are  for  the  most  part  able  to  realize  what  we 
will,  and  thus  we  accomplish  the  end  of  our  being.  The  con- 
templation of  futurity  inspires  humility  of  soul  in  our  judgment 
of  the  present. 

I  think  the  memory  of  children  can  not,  in  reason,  be  too  much 
stored  with  the  objects  and  facts  of  natural  history.  God  opens 
the  images  of  nature,  like  the  leaves  of  a  book,  before  the  eyes  of 
his  creature,  Man — and  teaches  him  all  that  is  grand  and  beau- 
tiful in  the  foaming  cataract,  the  glassy  lake,  and  the  floating 
mist. 

The  common  modern  novel,  in  which  there  is  no  imagination, 
but  a  miserable  struggle  to  excite  and  gratify  mere  curiosity, 
ought,  in  my  judgment,  to  be  wholly  forbidden  to  children 
Novel-reading  of  this  sort  is  especially  injurious  to  the  growth 
of  the  imagination,  the  judgment,  and  the  morals,  especially  to 
the  latter,  because  it  excites  mere  feelings  without  at  the  same 
time  ministering  an  impulse  to  action.  Women  are  good  novel- 
ists, but  indifferent  poets  ;  and  this  because  they  rarely  or 
never  thoroughly  distinguish  between  fact  and  fiction.  In  the 
jumble  of  the  two  lies  the  secret  of  the  modern  novel,  which  is 
the  medium  aliquid  between  them,  having  just  so  much  of  fic- 
tion as  to  obscure  the  fact,  and  so  much  of  fact  as  to  render  the 
fiction  insipid.  The  perusal  of  a  fashionable  lady's  novel,  is  to 
me  very  much  like  looking  at  the  scenery  and  decorations  of  a 
theatre  by  broad  daylight.  The  source  of  the  common  fondness 
for  novels  of  this  sort  rests  in  that  dislike  of  vacancy,  and  that 
love  of  sloth,  which  are  inherent  in  the  human  mind  ;  they  afford 


LECTURE  XII. 


19 


excitement  without  producing  reaction.  By  reaction  I  mean  an 
activity  of  the  intellectual  faculties,  which  shows  itself  in  conse- 
quent reasoning  and  observation,  and  originates  action  and  con- 
duct according  to  a  principle.  Thus,  the  act  of  thinking  presents 
two  sides  for  contemplation — that  of  external  causality,  in  which 
the  train  of  thought  may  be  considered  as  the  result  of  outward 
impressions,  of  accidental  combinations,  of  fancy,  or  the  associa- 
tions of  the  memory — and  on  the  other  hand,  that  of  internal 
causality,  or  of  the  energy  of  the  will  on  the  mind  itself.  Thought, 
therefore,  might  thus  be  regarded  as  passive  or  active  ;  and  the 
same  faculties  may  in  a  popular  sense  be  expressed  as  perception 
or  observation,  fancy  or  imagination,  memory  or  recollection. 


LECTURE  XII 


DREAMS APPARITIONS ALCHEMISTS PERSONALITY   OF    THE     EVIL, 

BEING BODILY   IDENTITY. 

It  is  a  general,  but,  as  it  appears  to  me,  a  mistaken  opinion, 
that  in  our  ordinary  dreams  we  judge  the  objects  to  be  real.  I 
say  our  ordinary  dreams  ;— because  as  to  the  night-mair  the  opin- 
ion is  to  a  considerable  extent  just.  But  the  night-mair  is  not  a 
mere  dream,  but  takes  place  when  the  waking  state  of  the  brain 
is  recommencing,  and  most  often  during  a  rapid  alternation,  a 
twinkling,  as  it  were,  of  sleeping  and  waking  ;— while  either 
from  pressure  on,  or  from  some  derangement  in,  the  stomach  or 
pther  digestive  organs  acting  on  the  external  skin  (which  is  still 
n  sympathy  with  the  stomach  and  bowels),  and  benumbing  it, 
;he  sensations  sent  up  to  the  brain  by  double  touch  (that  is,  when 
ny  own  hand  touches  my  side  or  breast),  are  so  faint  as  to  be 
merely  equivalent  to  the  sensation  given  by  single  touch,  as  when 
mother  person's  hand  touches  me.  The  mind,  therefore,  which 
it  all  times,  with  and  without  our  distinct  consciousness,  seeks 
or,  and  assumes,  some  outward  cause  for  every  impression 
;rom  without,  and  which  in  sleep,  by  aid  of  the  imaginative  fac- 
ilty,  converts  its  judgment  respecting  the  cause  into  a  personal 
mage  as  being  the  cause— the  mind,  I  say,  in  this  case,  deceived 


320  COUESE   OF   LECTURES. 

by  past  experience,  attributes  the  painful  sensation  received  to  a 
corresponding  agent — an  assassin,  for  instance,  stabbing  at  the 
side,  or  a  goblin  sitting  on  the  breast.  Add  too  that  the  im- 
pressions of  the  bed,  curtains,  room,  &c,  received  by  the  eyes  in 
the  half-moments  of  their  opening,  blend  with,  and  give  vivid- 
ness and  appropriate  distance  to,  the  dream  image  which  returns 
when  they  close  again ;  and  thus  we  unite  the  actual  perceptions, 
or  their  immediate  reliques,  with  the  phantoms  of  the  inward 
sense  ;  and  in  this  manner  so  confound  the  half-waking,  half- 
sleeping,  reasoning  power,  that  we  actually  do  pass  a  positive 
judgment  on  the  reality  of  what  we  see  and  hear,  though  often 
accompanied  by  doubt  and  self-questioning,  which,  as  I  have 
myself  experienced,  will  at  all  times  become  strong  enough,  even 
before  we  awake,  to  convince  us  that  it  is  what  it  is — namely, 
the  night-mair. 

In  ordinary  dreams  we  do  not  judge  the  objects  to  be  real; — 
we  simply  do  not  determine  that  they  are  unreal.  The  sensa- 
tions which  they  seem  to  produce,  are  in  truth  the  causes  and 
occasions  of  the  images  ;  of  which  there  are  two  obvious  proofs  : 
first,  that  in  dreams  the  strangest  and  most  sudden  metamor- 
phoses do  not  create  any  sensation  of  surprise  :  and  the  second, 
that  as  to  the  most  dreadful  images,  which  during  the  dream 
were  accompanied  with  agonies  of  terror,  we  merely  awake,  or 
turn  round  on  the  other  side,  and  off  fly  both  image  and  agony, 
which  would  be  impossible  if  the  sensations  were  produced  by  the 
images.  This  has  always  appeared  to  me  an  absolute  demonstra- 
tion of  the  true  nature  of  ghosts  and  apparitions — such  I  mean 
of  the  tribe  as  were  not  pure  inventions.  Fifty  years  ago  (and  to 
this  day  in  the  ruder  parts  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  in  almost 
every  kitchen  and  in  too  many  parlors  it  is  nearly  the  same)  you 
might  meet  persons  who  would  assure  you  in  the  most  solemn 
manner,  so  that  you  could  not  doubt  their  veracity  at  least,  that 
they  had  seen  an  apparition  of  such  and  such  a  person, — in  many 
cases,  that  the  apparition  had  spoken  to  them  ;  and  they  would 
describe  themselves  as  having  been  in  an  agony  of  terror.  They 
would  tell  you  the  story  in  perfect  health.  Now  take  the  other 
class  of  facts,  in  which  real  ghosts  have  appeared  ; — I  mean, 
where  figures  have  been  dressed  up  for  the  purpose  of  passing  for 
apparitions  : — in  every  instance  I  have  known  or  heard  of  (and  I 
have  collected  very  many)  the  consequence  has  been  either  sudden 


LECTUKE   XII.  321 

death,  or  fits,  or  idiocy,  or  mania,  or  a  brain  fever.  "Whence 
comes  the  difference  ?  evidently  from  this, — that  in  the  one  case 
the  whole  of  the  nervous  system  has  been  by  slight  internal  causes 
gradually  and  all  together  brought  into  a  certain  state,  the  sensa- 
tion of  which  is  extravagantly  exaggerated  during  sleep,  and  of 
which  the  images  are  the  mere  effects  and  exponents,  as  the  mo- 
tions of  the  weather-cock  are  of  the  wind ; — while  in  the  other 
case,  ihe  image  rushing  through  the  senses  upon  a  nervous  sys- 
tem, wholly  unprepared,  actually  causes  the  sensation,  which  is 
sometimes  powerful  enough  to  produce  a  total  check,  and  almost 
always  a  lesion  or  inflammation.  Who  has  not  witnessed  the 
difference  in  shock  when  we  have  leaped  down  half-a-dozen  steps 
intentionally,  and  that  of  having  missed  a  single  stair.  How 
comparatively  severe  the  latter  is  !  The  fact  really  is,  as  to  ap- 
paritions, that  the  terror  produces  the  image  instead  of  the  con- 
trary ;  for  in  omnem  actum  2^erceptionis  influit  imagination  as 
says  Wolfe. 

0,  strange  is  the  self-power  of  the  imagination — when  painful 
sensations  have  made  it  their  interpreter,  or  returning  gladsome- 
ness  or  convalescence  has  made  its  chilled  and  evanished  figures 
and  landscape  bud,  blossom,  and  live  in  scarlet,  green,  and  snowy 
white  (like  the  fire-screen  inscribed  with  the  nitrate  and  muriate 
of  cobalt) — strange  is  the  power  to  represent  the  events  and  cir- 
cumstances, even  to  the  anguish  or  the  triumph  of  the  quasi-cre- 
dent soul,  while  the  necessary  conditions,  the  only  possible  causes 
of  such  contingencies,  are  known  to  be  in  fact  quile  hopeless  ; — 
yea,  when  the  pure  mind  would  recoil  from  the  eve-lengthened 
shadow  of  an  approaching  hope,  as  from  a  crime  : — and  yet  the 
effect  shall  have  place,  and  substance,  and  living  energy,  and,  on 
a  blue  islet  of  ether,  in  a  whole  sky  of  blackest  cloudage,  shine 
like  a  firstling  of  creation  ! 

To  return,  however,  to  apparitions,  and  by  way  of  an  amusing 
illustration  of  the  nature  and  value  of  even  contemporary  testi- 
mony upon  such  subjects,  I  will  present  you  with  a  passage, 
literally  translated  by  my  friend,  Mr.  Southey,  from  the  well- 
known  work  of  Bernal  Dias,  one  of  the  companions  of  Cortez,  in 
the  conquest  of  Mexico  : 

Here  it  is  that  Gomara  says,  that  Francisco  de  Morla  rode  forward  on  a 
dappled  gray  hor&3,  before  Cortes  and  the  cavalry  came  up,  and  that  the 
apostle  St.  Iago,  or  St.  Peter,  was  there.     I  must  say  that  all  our  works 


322  COUKSE   OF   LECTUEES. 

and  victories  are  by  the  hand  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  in  this 
battle  there  were  for  each  of  us  so  many  Indians,  that  they  could  haye 
covered  us  with  handfuls  of  earth,  if  it  had  not  been  that  the  great  mercy 
of  God  helped  us  in  every  thing.  And  it  may  be  that  he  of  whom  Gomara 
speaks,  was  the  glorious  Santiago  or  San  Pedro,  and  I,  as  a  sinner,  was  not 
worthy  to  see  him;  but  he  whom  I  saw  there  and  knew,  was  Francisco  de 
Morla  on  a  chestnut  horse,  who  came  up  with  Cortes.  And  it  seems  to  me 
that  now  while  I  am  writing  this,  the  whole  war  is  represented  before  these 
sinful  eyes,  just  in  the  manner  as  we  then  went  through  it.  And  though 
I,  as  an  unworthy  sinner,  might  not  deserve  to  see  either  of  these  glorious 
apostles,  there  were  in  our  company  above  four  hundred  soldiers  and  Cortes, 
and  many  other  knights ;  and  it  would  have  been  talked  of  and  testified, 
and  they  would  have  made  a  church  when  they  peopled  the  town,  Avhich 
would  have  been  called  Santiago  de  la  Vittoria,  or  San  Pedro  de  la  Vittoria, 
as  it  is  now  called,  Santa  Maria  de  la  Vittoria.  And  if  it  was,  as  Gomara 
says,  bad  Christians  must  we  have  been  when  our  Lord  God  sent  us  his 
holy  apostles,  not  to  acknowledge  his  great  mercy,  and  venerate  his  church 
daily.  And  would  to  God,  it  had  been,  as  the  Chronicler  says  ! — but  till  I 
read  his  Chronicle,  I  never  heard  such  a  thing  from  any  of  the  conquerors 
who  were  there. 


Now,  what  if  the  odd  accident  of  such  a  man  as  Bernal  Dias' 
writing  a  history  had  not  taken  place  !  Gomara's  account,  the 
account  of  a  contemporary,  which  yet  must  have  been  read  by 
scores  who  were  present,  would  have  remained  uncontradicted 
I  remember  the  story  of  a  man,  whom  the  devil  met  and  talked 
with,  but  left  at  a  particular  lane  ; — the  man  followed  him  with 
his  eyes,  and  when  the  devil  got  to  the  turning  or  bend  of  the 
lane,  he  vanished  !  The  devil  was  upon  this  occasion  drest  in  a 
blue  coat,  plush  waistcoat,  leather  breeches  and  boots,  and  talked 
and  looked  just  like  a  common  man,  except  as  to  a  particular 
lock  of  hair  which  he  had.  "And  how  do  you  know  then  that 
it  was  the  devil?"  "How  do  I  know,"  replied  the  fellow, — 
"  why,  if  it  had  not  been  the  devil,  being  drest  as  he  was,  and 
looking  as  he  did,  why  should  I  have  been  sore  stricken  with 
fright  when  I  first  saw  him  ?  and  why  should  I  be  in  such  a 
tremble  all  the  while  he  talked  ?  And,  moreover,  he  had  a  par- 
ticular sort  of  a  kind  of  a  look,  and  when  I  groaned  and  said, 
upon  every  question  he  asked  me,  Lord  have  mercy  upon  me  ! 
or,  Christ  have  mercy  upon  me  !  it  was  plain  enough  that  he 
did  not  like  it,  and  so  he  left  me  !" — The  man  was  quite  sober 
when  he  related  this  story  ;  but  as  it  happened  to  him  on  his  re- 
turn from  market,  it  is  probable  that  he  was  then  muddled.     As 


LECTUKE  XII.  323 

for  myself,  I  was  actually  seen  in  Newgate  in  the  winter  of 
1798  ; — the  person  who  saw  me  there,  said  he  asked  my  name 
of  Mr.  A.  B.  a  known  acquaintance  of  mine,  who  told  him  that  it 

«was  young  Coleridge,  who  had  married  the  eldest  Miss . 

"  Will  you  go  to  Newgate,  Sir  ?"  said  my  friend  ;  "  for  I  assure  you 
that  Mr.  C.  is  now  in  Germany."  "  Very  willingly,"  replied  the 
other,  and  away  they  went  to  Newgate,  and  sent  for  A.  B. 
"  Coleridge,"  cried  he,  "  in  Newgate  !  God  forbid  !"  I  said,  "  young 

Col who  married  the  eldest  Miss ."     The  names  were 

something  similar.  And  yet  this  person  had  himself  really  seen 
me  at  one  of  my  lectures. 

I  remember,  upon  the  occasion  of  my  inhaling  the  nitrous  oxide 
at  the  Royal  Institution,  about  five  minutes  afterwards,  a  gentle 
man  came  from  the  other  side  of  the  theatre  and  said  to  me, — 
"Was  it  not  ravishingly  delightful,  Sir?" — "It  was  highly 
pleasurable,  no  doubt." — "Was  it  not  very  like  sweet  music?" — 
"I  can  not  say  I  perceived  any  analogy  to  it." — "  Did  you  not 
say  it  was  very  like  Mrs.  Billington  singing  by  your  ear  ?" — "  No, 
Sir,  I  said  that  while  I  was  breathing  the  gas,  there  was  a  sing- 
ing in  my  ears." 

To  return,  however,  to  dreams,  I  not  only  believe,  for  the  rea- 
sons given,  but  have  more  than  once  actually  experienced  that 
the  most  fearful  forms,  when  produced  simply  by  association,  in- 
stead of  causing  fear,  operate  no  other  effect  than  the  same  would 
do  if  they  had  passed  through  my  mind  as  thoughts,  while  I  was 
composing  a  faery  tale  ;  the  whole  depending  on  the  wise  and 
gracious  law  in  our  nature,  that  the  actual  bodily  sensations,  called 
forth  according  to  the  law  of  association  by  thoughts  and  images 
of  the  mind,  never  greatly  transcend  the  limits  of  pleasurable 
feeling  in  a  tolerably  healthy  frame,  unless  when  an  act  of  the 
judgment  supervenes  and  interprets  them  as  purporting  instant 
danger  to  ourselves. 

*  There  have  been  very  strange  and  incredible  stories  told  of 
and  by  the  alchemists.  Perhaps  in  some  of  them  there  may  have 
been  a  specific  form  of  mania,  originating  in  the  constant  inten 
sion  of  the  mind  on  an  imaginary  end,  associated  with  an  im- 
mense variety  of  means,  all  of  them  substances  not  familiar  to 
men  in  general,  and  in  forms  strange  and  unlike  to  those  of  ordi 
nary  nature.  Sometimes,  it  seems  as  if  the  alchemists  wrote  like 
*  From  Mr.  Green's  note. 


824  COURSE   OP  LECTURES. 

the  Pythagoreans  on  music,  imagining  a  metaphysical  and  in 
audible  music  as  the  basis  of  the  audible.  It  is  clear  that  by 
sulphur  they  meant  the  solar  rays  or  light,  and  by  mercury  the 
principle  of  ponderability,  so  that  their  theory  was  the  same  with 
that  of  the  Heraclitic  physics,  or  the  modern  German  Natur- 
philosophic,  which  deduces  all  things  from  light  and  gravitation, 
each  being  bipolar ;  gravitation  =  north  and  south,  or  attraction 
and  repulsion  ;  light  =  east  and  west,  or  contraction  and  dilation ; 
and  gold  being  the  tetrad,  or  interpenetration  of  both,  as  water 
v/a8  the  dyad  of  light,  and  iron  the  dyad  of  gravitation. 

It  is,  probably,  unjust  to  accuse  the  alchemists  generally  of 
dabbling  with  attempts  at  magic  in  the  common  sense  of  the 
term.  The  supposed  exercise  of  magical  power  always  involved 
some  moral  guilt,  directly  or  indirectly,  as  in  stealing  a  piece  of 
meat  to  lay  on  warts,  touching  humors  with  the  hand  of  an  exe- 
cuted person,  &c.  Rites  of  this  sort  and  other  practices  of  sor- 
cery have  always  been  regarded  with  trembling  abhorrence  by  all 
nations,  even  the  most  ignorant,  as  by  the  Africans,  the  Hudson's 
Bay  people,  and  others.  The  alchemists  were,  no  doubt,  often 
considered  as  dealers  in  art  magic,  and  many  of  them  were  not 
unwilling  that  such  a  belief  should  be  prevalent ;  and  the  more 
earnest  among  them  evidently  looked  at  their  association  of  sub- 
stances, fumigations,  and  other  chemical  operations  as  merely  cer- 
emonial, and  seem,  therefore,  to  have  had  a  deeper  meaning,  that 
of  evoking  a  latent  power.  It  would  be  profitable  to  make  a 
collection  of  all  the  cases  of  cures  by  magical  charms  and  incan- 
tations ;  much  useful  information  might,  probably,  be  derived 
from  it ;  for  it  is  to  be  observed  that  such  rites  are  the  form  in 
which  medical  knowledge  would  be  preserved  amongst  a  barba 
rous  and  ignorant  people. 

Note.*     June,  1827. 

The  apocryphal  book  of  Tobit  consists  of  a  very  simple,  but 
beautiful  and  interesting,  family-memoir,  into  which  some  later 
Jewish  poet  or  fabulist  of  Alexandria  wove  the  ridiculous  and 
frigid  machinery,  borrowed  from  the  popular  superstitions  of  the 
Greeks  (though,  probably,  of  Egyptian  origin),  and  accommoda- 
ted, clumsily  enough,  to  the  purer  monotheism  of  the  Mosa;c  law. 

*  "Written  in  a  copy  of  Mr.  Hillhouse's  Hadad. — Ed. 


LECTURE  XII.  325 

The  Rape  of  the  Lock  is  another  instance  of  a  simple  tale  thus 
enlarged  at  a  later  period,  though  in  this  case  by  the  same  author, 
and  with  a  very  different  result.  Now  unless  Mr.  Hillhouse  is 
Romanist  enough  to  receive  this  nursery-tale  garnish  of  a  domestic 
incident  as  grave  history  and  holy  writ  (for  which,  even  from 
learned  Roman  Catholics,  he  would  gain  more  credit  as  a  very 
obedient  child  of  the  Church  than  as  a  biblical  critic),  he  will 
find  it  no  easy  matter  to  support  this  assertion  of  his  by  the  pas- 
sages of  Scripture  here  referred  to,  consistently  with  any  sane  in- 
terpretation of  their  import  and  purpose. 

I.  The  Fallen  Spirits. 

This  is  the  mythological  form,  or,  if  you  will,  the  symbolical 
representation,  of  a  profound  idea  necessary  as  the  prcE-supposi- 
turn  of  the  Christian  scheme,  or  a  postulate  of  reason,  indispen- 
sable, if  we  would  render  the  existence  of  a  world  of  Unites  com- 
patible with  the  assumption  of  a  super-mundane  God,  not  one 
with  the  world.  In  short,  this  idea  is  the  condition  under  which 
alone  the  reason  of  man  can  retain  the  doctrine  of  an  infinite  and 
absolute  Being,  and  yet  keep  clear  of  pantheism  as  exhibited  by 
Benedict  Spinosa. 

II.  The  Egyptian  Magicians. 

This  whole  narrative  is  probably  a  relic  of  the  old  diplomatic 
lingua-arcana,  or  state-symbolique — in  which  the  prediction  of 
events  is  expressed  as  the  immediate  causing  of  them.  Thus  the 
prophet  is  said  to  destroy  the  city,  the  destruction  of  which  he 
predicts.  The  word  which  our  version  renders  by  "  enchant 
menU"  signifies  "flames  or  burnings,"  by  which  it  is  probable 
that  the  Egyptians  were  able  to  deceive  the  spectators,  and  sub- 
stitute serpents  for  staves.     See  Parkhurst  in  voce. 

And  with  regard  to  the  possessions  in  the  Gospels,  bear  in 
mind  first  of  all,  that  spirits  are  not  necessarily  souls  or  Ts  {ich- 
heiten  or  self-conscious7iesses),  and  that  the  most  ludicrous  absur- 
dities would  follow  from  taking  them  as  such  in  the  Gospel  in 
stances  ;  and  secondly,  that  the  Evangelist,  who  has  recorded  the 
most  of  these  incidents,  himself  speaks  of  one  of  these  possessed 
persons  as  a  lunatic  : — (uElrjviaQsiui — e^i]ld-ev  u/i'  avxov  to  dixt 
mviov.  Matt.  xvii.  15,  18)  while  St.  John  names  them  not  at  all, 
but  seems  to  include  them  under  the  description  of  diseased  or 
deranged  persons.  That  madness  may  result  from  spiritual 
causes,  and  not  only  or  principally  from  physical  ailments,  may 


326  COURSE   OF   LECTURES. 

readily  be  admitted.  Is  not  our  will  itself  a  spiritual  power  ? 
Is  it  not  the  spirit  of  the  man  ?  The  mind  of  a  rational  and  re- 
sponsible being  (that  is,  of  a  free-agent)  is  a  spirit,  though  it  does 
not  follow  that  all  spirits  are  minds.  Who  shall  dare  determine 
what  spiritual  influences  may  not  arise  out  of  the  collective  evil 
wills  of  wicked  men  ?  Even  the  bestial  life,  sinless  in  animals 
and  their  nature,  may  when  awakened  in  the  man,  and  by  his 
own  act  admitted  into  his  will,  become  a  spiritual  influence. 
He  receives  a  nature  into  his  will,  which,  by  this  very  act  be- 
comes a  corrupt  will ;  and  vice  versa,  this  will  becomes  his  na- 
ture, and  thus  a  corrupt  nature.  This  may  be  conceded  ;  and 
this  is  all  that  the  recorded  words  of  our  Saviour  absolutely  re- 
quire in  order  to  receive  an  appropriate  sense  ;  but  this  is  alto- 
gether different  from  making  spirits  to  be  devils,  and  devils  self- 
conscious  individuals. 

Notes.*     March,  1824. 

A  Christian's  conflicts  and  conquests,  p.  459.  By  the  devil  we  are  to  under- 
stand that  apostate  spirit  which  fell  from  God,  and  is  always  designing  to 
hale  down  others  from  God  also.  The  Old  Dragon  (mentioned  in  the  Reve- 
lation) with  his  tail  drew  down  the  third  part  of  the  stars  of  heaven,  and 
cast  them  to  the  earth. 

How  much  is  it  to  be  regretted,  that  so  enlightened  and  able 
a  divine  as  Smith,  had  not  philosophically  and  scripturally  enu- 
cleated this  so  difficult,  yet  important  question, — respecting  the 
personal  existence  of  the  evil  principle  ;  that  is,  whether  as  to 
OeZov  of  paganism  is  6  dedg  in  Christianity,  so  the  to  t\ovi]o6v  is  to 
be  6  novijfjbg, — and  whether  this  is  an  express  doctrine  of  Christ, 
and  not  merely  a  Jewish  dogma  left  undisturbed  to  fade  away 
under  the  increasing  light  of  the  Gospel,  instead  of  assuming  the 
former,  and  confirming  the  position  by  a  verse  from  a  poetic  tissue 
of  visual  symbols, — a  verse  alien  from  the  subject,  and  by  which 
the  Apocalypt  enigmatized  the  Neronian  persecutions  and  the 
apostasy  through  fear  occasioned  by  it  in  a  large  number  of  con- 
verts. 

lb.  p.  463.  "When  we  say,  the  devil  is  continually  busy  with  us,  I  mean 
uot  only  some  apostate  spirit  as  one  particular  being,  but  that  spirit  of 

*  Written  in  a  copy  of  "  Select  Discourses  by  John  Smith,  of  Queen's 
College,  Cambridge,  1660,"  and  communicated  by  the  Rev.  Edward  Cole- 
ridge.— Ed. 


LECTURE  XII.  327 

apostasy  which  is  lodged  in  all  men's  natures  ;  and  this  may  seem  particu- 
larly to  be  aimed  at  in  this  place,  if  we  observe  the  context : — as  the  scrip- 
ture speaks  of  Christ  not  only  as  a  particular  person,  but  as  a  divine  prin- 
ciple in  holy  souls. 

Indeed  the  devil  is  not  only  the  name  of  one  particular  thing,  but  a  na- 
ture. 

May  I  not  venture  to  suspect  that  this  was  Smith's  own  belief 
and  judgment  ?  and  that  his  conversion  of  the  Satan,  that  is, 
circuitor,  or  minister  of  police  (what  our  Sterne  calls  the  accus- 
ing angel)  in  the  prologue  to  Job  into  the  devil  was  a  mere  con- 
descension to  the  prevailing  prejudice  ?  Here,  however,  he 
speaks  like  himself,  and  like  a  true  religious  philosopher,  who 
felt  that  the  personality  of  evil  spirits  is  a  trifling  question,  com- 
pared with  the  personality  of  the  evil  principle.  This  is  indeed 
most  momentous. 

Note  on  a  Passage  in  the  Life  of  Henry  Earl  of  Morland. 
20th  June,  1827. 

The  defect  of  this  and  all  similar  theories  that  I  am  acquaint- 
ed with,  or  rather,  let  me  say,  the  desideratum,  is  the  neglect  of 
a  previous  definition  of  the  term  "body."  What  do  you  mean 
by  it  ?  The  immediate  grounds  of  a  man's  size,  visibility,  tangi- 
bility, &c.  ? — But  these  are  in  a  continual  flux  even  as  a  column 
of  smoke.  The  material  particles  of  carbon,  nitrogen,  oxygen, 
hydrogen,  lime,  phosphorus,  sulphur,  soda,  iron,  that  constitute 
the  ponderable  organism  in  May,  1827,  at  the  moment  of  Pollio's 
death  in  his  70th  year,  have  no  better  claim  to  be  called  his 
I  body"  than  the  numerical  particles  of  the  same  names  that 
constituted  the  ponderable  mass  in  May,  1787,  in  Pollio's  prime 
of  manhood  in  his  30th  year  ; — the  latter  no  less  than  the  former 
go  into  the  grave,  that  is,  suffer  dissolution,  the  one  in  a  series, 
the  other  simultaneously.  The  result  to  the  particles  is  precisely 
the  same  in  both,  and  of  both  therefore  we  must  say  with  holy 
Paul — "  Thou  fool !  that  which  thou  sowest,  thou  sowest  not 
that  body  that  shall  be,"  &c.  Neither  this  nor  that  is  the  body 
that  abideth.  Abide th,  I  say  ;  for  that  which  riseth  again  must 
have  remained,  though  perhaps  in  an  inert  state. — It  is  not  dead, 
but  sleepeth  ; — that  is,  it  is  not  dissolved  any  more  than  the  ex- 
terior or  phenomenal  organism  appears  to  us  dissolved  when  it 
lieth  in  apparent  inactivity  during  our  sleep. 


328  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

Sound  reasoning  this,  to  the  best  of  my  judgment,  as  far  as  it 
goes  But  how  are  we  to  explain  the  reaction  of  this  fluxional 
body  on  the  animal  ?  In  each  moment  the  particles  by  the  in* 
forming  force  of  the  living  principle  constitute  an  organ  not  only 
of  motion  and  sense,  but  of  consciousness.  The  organ  plays  on 
the  organist.  How  is  this  conceivable  ?  The  solution  requires  a 
depth,  stillness,  and  subtlety  of  spiiit  not  only  for  its  discovery, 
but  even  for  the  understanding  of  it  when  discovered,  and  in 
the  most  appropriate  words  enunciated.  I  can  merely  give  a 
hint.  The  particles  themselves  must  have  an  interior  and  grav- 
itate being,  and  the  multeity  must  be  a  removable  or  at  least 
suspensible  accident. 


LECTURE    XIII* 

ON   POESY    OR   AIIT.    (II) 


Man  communicates  by  articulation  of  sounds,  and  paramountly 
by  the  memory  in  the  ear  ;  nature,  by  the  impression  of  bounds 
and  surfaces  on  the  eye,  and  through  the  eye  it  gives  significance 
and  appropriation,  and  thus  the  conditions  of  memory,  or  the  ca 
pability  of  being  remembered,  to  sounds,  smells,  &c.  Now  Art, 
used  collectively  for  painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  and  music, 
is  the  mediatress  between,  and  reconciler  of,  nature  and  man. 
(mm)  It  is,  therefore,  the  power  of  humanizing  nature,  of  in- 
fusing the  thoughts  and  passions  of  man  into  every  thing  which 
is  the  object  of  his  contemplation  ;  color,  form,  motion,  and  sound 
are  the  elements  which  it  combines,  and  it  stamps  them  into 
unity  in  the  mould  of  a  moral  idea. 

The  primary  art  is  writing  ; — primary,  if  we  regard  the  pur- 
poses abstracted  from  the  different  modes  of  realizing  it,  those 
steps  of  progression  of  which  the  instances  are  still  visible  in  the 
lower  degrees  of  civilization.  First,  there  is  mere  gesticulation ; 
then  rosaries  or  wampun  ;  then  picture-language  ;  then  hiero- 

*  F^r  the  Notes  to  this  Lecture,  containing  references  to  Sclielling's  ora- 
tion on  the  Forming  or  Imaging  Arts,  with  extracts  from  the  same,  see  the 
tod  of  the  volume. 


LECTURE  XIII.  329 

glyphics,  and  finally  alphabetic  letters.  These  all  consist  of  a 
translation  of  man  into  nature,  of  a  substitution  of  the  visible 
for  the  audible. 

The  so-called  music  of  savage  tribes  as  little  deserves  the 
name  of  art  for  the  understanding  as  the  ear  warrants  it  for  mu- 
sic. Its  lowest  state  is  a  mere  expression  of  passion  by  sounds 
which  the  passion  itself  necessitates  ; — the  highest  amounts  to 
no  more  than  a  voluntary  reproduction  of  these  sounds  in  the 
absence  of  the  occasioning  causes,  so  as  to  give  the  pleasure  of 
contrast, — for  example,  by  the  various  outcries  of  battle  in  the 
song  of  security  and  triumph.  Poetry  also  is  purely  human ;  for 
all  its  materials  are  from  the  mind,  and  all  its  products  are  for 
the  mind.  But  it  is  the  apotheosis  of  the  former  state,  in  which 
by  excitement  of  the  associative  power  passion  itself  imitates  or- 
der, and  the  order  resulting  produces  a  pleasurable  passion,  and 
thus  it  elevates  the  mind  by  making  its  feelings  the  object  of  its 
reflection.  So  likewise,  whilst  it  recalls  the  sights  and  sounds 
that  had  accompanied  the  occasions  of  the  original  passions,  poe- 
try impregnates  them  with  an  interest  not  their  own  by  means 
of  the  passions,  and  yet  tempers  the  passion  by  the  calming 
power  which  all  distinct  images  exert  on  the  human  soul.  In 
this  way  poetry  is  the  preparation  for  art,  inasmuch  as  it  avails 
itself  of  the  forms  of  nature  to  recall,  to  express,  and  to  modify 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  mind.  Still,  however,  poetry 
can  only  act  through  the  intervention  of  articulate  speech,  which 
is  so  peculiarly  human,  that  in  all  languages  it  constitutes  the 
ordinary  phrase  by  which  man  and  nature  are  contra-distinguished. 
It  is  the  original  force  of  the  word  'brute  ;'  and  even  'mute'  and 
'  dumb'  do  not  convey  the  absence  of  sound,  but  the  absence  of 
articulated  sounds. 

As  soon  as  the  human  mind  is  intelligibly  addressed  by  an 
outward  image  exclusively  of  articulate  speech,  so  soon  does  art 
commence.  But  please  to  observe  that  I  have  laid  particular 
stress  on  the  words  'human  mind,'  meaning  to  exclude  thereby 
all  results  common  to  man  and  all  other  sentient  creatures,  and 
consequently  confining  myself  to  the  effect  produced  by  the  con- 
gruity  of  the  animal  impression  with  the  reflective  powers  of  the 
mind  ;  so  that  not  the  thing  presented,  but  that  which  is  repre 
sented  by  the  thing  shall  be  the  source  of  the  pleasure.  n  this 
sense  nature  itself  is  to  a  religious  observer  the  art  of  God  ;  and 


380  COURSE  OF  LECTURES. 

for  the  same  cause  art  itself  might  be  defined  as  of  a  middle 
quality  between  a  thought  and  a  thing,  or,  as  I  said  before,  the 
union  and  reconciliation  of  that  which  is  nature  with  that  which 
is  exclusively  human.  It  is  the  figured  language  of  thought,  and 
is  distinguished  from  nature  by  the  unity  of  all  the  parts  in  one 
thought  or  idea.  Hence  nature  itself  would  give  us  the  impres- 
sion of  a  work  of  art  if  we  could  see  the  thought  which  is  pres- 
ent at  once  in  the  whole  and  in  every  part ;  and  a  work  of  art 
will  be  just  in  proportion  as  it  adequately  conveys  the  thought, 
and  rich  in  proportion  to  the  variety  of  parts  which  it  holds  in 
anity. 

If,  therefore,  the  term  ■  mute'  be  taken  as  opposed  not  to  sound 
but  to  articulate  speech,  the  old  definition  of  painting  will  in  fact 
be  the  true  and  best  definition  of  the  Fine  Arts  in  general,  that 
is,  muta  jjoesis,  mute  poesy,  and  so  of  course  poesy,  (nn)  And, 
as  all  languages  perfect  themselves  by  a  gradual  process  of  desy- 
nonymizing  words  originally  equivalent,  I  have  cherished  the 
wish  to  use  the  word  '  poesy'  as  the  generic  or  common  term, 
and  to  distinguish  that  species  of  poetry  which  is  not  muta  2^oesis 
by  its  usual  name  '  poetry  ;'  while  of  all  the  other  species  which 
collectively  form  the  Fine  Arts,  there  would  remain  this  as  the 
common  definition, — that  they  all,  like  poetry,  are  to  express  in- 
tellectual purposes,  thoughts,  conceptions,  and  sentiments  which 
have  their  origin  in  the  human  mind,  not,  however,  as  poetry 
does,  by  means  of  articulate  speech,  but  as  nature  or  the  divine 
art  does,  by  form,  color,  magnitude,  proportion,  or  by  sound,  that 
is,  silently  or  musically,  (oo) 

Well  !  it  may  be  said — but  who  has  ever  thought  otherwise  ! 
We  all  know  that  art  is  the  imitatress  of  nature.  And,  doubt- 
less, the  truths  which  I  hope  to  convey,  would  be  barren  truisms, 
if  all  men  meant  the  same  by  the  words  '  imitate'  and  '  nature.' 
(pp)  But  it  would  be  flattering  mankind  at  large,  to  presume 
that  such  is  the  fact.  First,  to  imitate.  The  impression  on  the 
wax  is  not  an  imitation,  but  a  copy,  of  the  seal ;  the  seal  itself 
is  an  imitation.  But,  further,  in  order  to  form  a  philosophic 
conception,  we  must  seek  for  the  kind,  as  the  heat  in  ice,  invisi- 
ble light,  &c,  whilst,  for  practical  purposes,  we  must  have  ref- 
erence tc  the  degree.  It  is  sufficient  that  philosophically  we  un- 
derstand that  in  all  imitation  two  elements  must  co-exist,  and 
not  only  co-exist,  but  must  be  perceived  as  co-existing.     These 


LECTURE  XIII.  33l 

two  constituent  elements  are  likeness  and  unlikeness,  or  sameness 
and  difference,  and  in  all  genuine  creations  of  art  there  must  be 
a  union  of  these  disparates.  The  artist  may  take  his  point  of 
view  where  he  pleases,  provided  that  the  desired  effect  be  per- 
ceptibly produced, — that  there  be  likeness  in  the  difference,  dif- 
ference in  the  likeness,  and  a  reconcilement  of  both  in  one.  If 
there  be  likeness  to  nature  without  any  check  of  difference,  the 
result  is  disgusting,  and  the  more  complete  the  delusion,  the 
more  loathsome  the  effect,  (qq)  Why  are  such  simulations  of 
nature,  as  wax-work  figures  of  men  and  women,  so  disagreeable  ? 
Because,  not  finding  the  motion  and  the  life  which  we  expected, 
we  are  shocked  as  by  a  falsehood,  every  circumstance  of  detail, 
which  before  induced  us  to  be  interested,  making  the  distance 
from  truth  more  palpable.  You  set  out  with  a  supposed  reality, 
and  are  disappointed  and  disgusted  with  the  deception ;  whilst.. 
in  respect  to  a  work  of  genuine  imitation,  you  begin  with  an  ac- 
knowledged total  difference,  and  then  every  touch  of  nature  gives 
you  the  pleasure  of  an  approximation  to  truth.  The  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  all  this  is  undoubtedly  the  horror  of  falsehood 
and  the  love  of  truth  inherent  in  the  human  breast.  The  Greek 
tragic  dance  rested  on  these  principles,  and  I  can  deeply  sympa- 
thize in  imagination  with  the  Greeks  in  this  favorite  part  of  their 
theatrical  exhibitions,  when  I  call  to  mind  the  pleasure  I  felt  in 
beholding  the  combat  of  the  Horatii  and  Curiatii  most  exqui- 
sitely danced  in  Italy  to  the  music  of  Cimarosa. 

Secondly,  as  to  nature.  We  must  imitate  nature  !  yes,  but 
what  in  nature, — all  and  every  thing  ?  No,  the  beautiful  in  na- 
ture, (rr)  And  what  then  is  the  beautiful  ?  What  is  beauty  ? 
It  is,  in  the  abstract,  the  unity  of  the  manifold,  the  coalescence 
of  the  diverse.;  in  the  concrete,  it  is  the  union  of  the  shapely 
(formosum)  with  the  vital.  In  the  dead  organic  it  depends  on 
regularity  of  form,  the  first  and  lowest  species  of  which  is  the 
triangle  with  all  its  modifications,  as  in  crystals,  architecture,  &c. ; 
in  the  living  organic  it  is  not  mere  regularity  of  form,  which  would 
produce  a  sense  of  formality  ;  neither  is  it  subservient  to  any  thing 
beside  itself,  (ss)  It  may  be  present  in  a  disagreeable  object,  in 
which  the  proportion  of  the  parts  constitutes  a  whole  ;  it  does 
not  arise  from  association,  as  the  agreeable  does,  but  sometimes 
lies  in  the  rupture  of  association  ;  it  is  not  different  to  different 
individuals  and  nations,  as  has  been  said,  nor  is  it  connected  with 


332  COUESE   OF  LECTUEES. 

the  ideas  oi  the  good,  or  the  fit,  or  the  useful.  The  sense  of  beauty 
is  intuitive;  and  beauty  itself  is  all  that  inspires  pleasure  without^ 
and  aloof  from,  and  even  contrarily  to,  interest. 

If  the  artist  copies  the  mere  nature,  the  natura  naturata,  what 
idle  rivalry !  If  he  proceeds  only  from  a  given  form,  which  is 
supposed  to  answer  to  the  notion  of  beauty,  what  an  emptiness, 
what  an  unreality  there  always  is  in  his  productions,  as  in  Cipri- 
ani's pictures  !  Believe  me,  you  must  master  the  essence,  the 
natura  naturans,  which  presupposes  a  bond  between  nature  in 
the  higher  sense  and  the  soul  of  man.  (ti) 

The  wisdom  in  nature  is  distinguished  from  that  in  man,  by  the 
co-instantaneity  of  the  plan  and  the  execution  ;  the  thought  and 
the  product  are  one,  or  are  given  at  once  ;  but  there  is  no  reflex 
act,  and  hence  there  is  no  moral  responsibility.  In  man  there  is 
reflexion,  freedom,  and  choice  ;  he  is,  therefore,  the  head  of  the 
visible  creation,  (uu)  In  the  objects  of  nature  are  presented,  as 
in  a  mirror,  all  the  possible  elements,  steps,  and  processes  of  in- 
tellect antecedent  to  consciousness,  and  therefore  to  the  full  devel- 
opment of  the  intelligential  act ;  and  man's  mind  is  the  very  focus 
of  all  the  rays  of  intellect  which  are  scattered  throughout  the 
images  of  nature.  Now  so  to  place  these  images,  totalized,  and 
fitted  to  the  limits  of  the  human  mind,  as  to  elicit  from,  and  to 
superinduce  upon,  the  forms  themselves  the  moral  reflections  to 
which  they  approximate,  to  make  the  external  internal,  the  in- 
ternal external,  to  make  nature  thought,  and  thought  nature, — 
this  is  the  mystery  of  genius  in  the  Fine  Arts.  Dare  I  add  that 
the  genius  must  act  on  the  feeling,  that  body  is  but  a  striving  to 
become  mind,  that  it  is  mind  in  its  essence  !  (vv) 

In  every  work  of  art  there  is  a  reconcilement  of  the  external 
with  the  internal ;  the  conscious  is  so  impressed  on  the  uncon- 
scious as  to  appear  in  it ;  as  compare  mere  letters  inscribed  on  a 
tomb  with  figures  themselves  constituting  the  tomb.  He  who 
combines  the  two  is  the  man  of  genius  ;  and  for  that  reason  he 
must  partake  of  both.  Hence  there  is  in  genius  itself  an  uncon 
scious  activity ;  nay,  that  is  the  genius  in  the  man  of  genius,  {ww) 
And  this  is  the  true  exposition  of  the  rule  that  the  artist  must 
first  eloign  himself  from  nature  in  order  to  return  to  her  with  full 
effect.  "Why  this  ?  Because  if  he  were  to  begin  by  mere  painful 
copying,  he  would  produce  masks  only,  not  forms  breathing  life. 
He  must  out  of  his  own  mind  create  forms  according  to  the  se- 


LECTURE  XIII.  333 

rere  laws  of  the  intellect,  in  order  to  generate  in  himself  that  co- 
ordination of  freedom  and  law,  that  involution  of  obedience  in 
the  prescript,  and  of  the  prescript  in  the  impulse  to  obey,  which 
assimilates  him  to  nature,  and  enables  him  to  understand  her. 
He  merely  absents  himself  for  a  season  from  her,  that  his  own 
spirit,  which  has  the  same  ground  with  nature,  may  learn  her 
unspoken  language  in  its  main  radicals,  before  he  approaches  to 
her  endless  compositions  of  them,  (xx)  Yes,  not  to  acquire  cold 
notions — lifeless  technical  rules— but  living  and  life-producing 
ideas,  which  shall  contain  their  own  evidence,  the  certainty  that 
they  are  essentially  one  with  the  germinal  causes  in  nature — his 
consciousness  being  the  focus  and  mirror  of  both, — for  this  does 
the  artist  for  a  time  abandon  the  external  real  in  order  to  return 
to  it  with  a  complete  sympathy  with  its  internal  and  actual. 
For  of  all  wo  see,  hear,  feel  and  touch  the  substance  is  and  must 
be  in  ourselves ;  and  therefore  there  is  no  alternative  in  reason 
between  the  dreary  (and  thank  heaven  !  almost  impossible)  be- 
lief that  every  thing  around  us  is  but  a  phantom,  or  that  the  life 
which  is  in  us  is  in  them  likewise  ;*  and  that  to  know  is  to  re- 
semble, when  we  speak  of  objects  out  of  ourselves,  even  as  within 
ourselves  to  learn  is,  according  to  Plato,  only  to  recollect ;— the 
only  effective  answer  to  which,  that  I  have  been  fortunate  enough 
to  meet  with,  is  that  which  Pope  has  consecrated  for  future  use  in 
the  line- 
Arid  coxcombs  vanquish  Berkeley  with  a  grin  ! 

The  artist  must  imitate  that  which  is  within  the  thing,  that  which 
is  active  through  form  and  figure,  and  discourses  to  us  by  symbols 
the  JYatur-geist,  or  spirit  of  nature,  as  we  unconsciously  imitate 
those  whom  we  love  ;  for  so  only  can  he  hope  to  produce  any 
work  truly  natural  in  the  object  and  truly  human  in  the  effect,  (yy) 
The  idea  which  puts  the  form  together  can  not  itself  be  the  form 
It  is  above  form,  and  is  its  essence,  the  universal  in  the  individual, 
or  the  individuality  itself,— the  glance  and  the  exponent  of  the 
indwelling  power,  {zz) 

Each  thing  that  lives  has  its  moment  of  self-exposition,  and  so 
has  each  period  of  each  thing,  if  we  remove  the  disturbing  forces 

•  *  See  the  Biographia  Literaria  of  Mr.  Coleridge,  chap.  xii.  p.  322,  and 
Schelling's  Transcendental  Idea7'sm. 


334  COURSE   OF  LECTURES. 

Df  accident  To  do  this  is  the  business  of  ideal  art,  whether  in 
images  of  childhood,  youth,  or  age,  in  man  or  in  woman,  (aaa) 
Hence  a  good  portrait  is  the  abstract  of  the  personal ;  it  is  not 
the.  likeness  for  actual  comparison,  but  for  recollection.  This 
explains  why  the  likeness  of  a  very  good  portrait  is  not  always 
recognized ;  because  some  persons  never  abstract,  and  amongst 
these  are  especially  to  be  numbered  the  near  relations  and  friends 
of  the  subject,  in  consequence  of  the  constant  pressure  and  check 
exercised  on  their  minds  by  the  actual  presence  of  the  original. 
And  each  thing  that  only  appears  to  live  has  also  its  possible  po- 
sition of  relation  to  life,  as  nature  herself  testifies,  who,  where 
she  can  not  be,  prophesies  her  being  in  the  crystallized  metal,  or 
the  inhaling  plant. 

The  charm,  the  indispensable  requisite,  of  sculpture  is  unity 
of  effect.  Bat  painting  rests  in  a  material  remoter  from  nature, 
and  its  compass  is  therefore  greater,  {bbb)  Light  and  shade  give 
external,  as  well  as  internal,  being  even  with  all  its  accidents, 
whilst  sculpture  is  confined  to  the  latter.  And  here  I  may  ob- 
serve that  the  subjects  chosen  for  works  of  art,  whether  in  sculp- 
ture or  painting,  should  be  such  as  really  are  capable  of  being 
expressed  and  conveyed  within  the  limits  of  those  arts.  More- 
over they  ought  to  be  such  as  will  affect  the  spectator  by  their 
truth,  their  beauty,  or  their  sublimity,  and  therefore  they  may  be 
addressed  to  the  judgment,  the  senses,  or  the  reason.  The  peculi- 
arity of  the  impression  which  they  may  make,  may  be  derived 
either  from  color  and  form,  or  from  proportion  and  fitness,  or  from 
the  excitement  of  the  moral  feelings  ;  or  all  these  may  be  com- 
bined. Such  works  as  do  combine  these  sources  of  effect  must 
have  the  preference  in  dignity. 

Imitation  of  the  antique  may  be  too  exclusive,  and  may  pro- 
duce an  injurious  effect  on  modern  sculpture  ; — 1st,  generally, 
because  such  an  imitation  can  not  fail  to  have  a  tendency  to 
keep  the  attention  fixed  on  externals  rather  than  on  the  thought 
within ; — 2dly,  because,  accordingly,  it  leads  the  artist  to  rest 
satisfied  with  that  which  is  always  imperfect,  namely,  bodily 
form,  and  circumscribes  his  views  of  mental  expression  to  the 
ideas  of  power  and  grandeur  only ; — 3dly,  because  it  induces  an 
effort  to  combine  together  two  incongruous  things,  that  is  to  say, 
modern  feelings  in  antique  forms  ; — 4thly,  because  it  speaks  in  a 
language,  as  it  were,  learned  and  dead,  the  tones  of  which,  being 


LECTUEE  XIII.  335 

unfamiliar,  leave  the  common  spectator  cold  and  unimpressed  ; 
(ccc) — and  lastly,  because  it  necessarily  ca  uses  a  neglect  of  thoughts, 
emotions  and  images  of  profounder  interest  and  more  exalted  dig' 
nity,  as  motherly,  sisterly,  and  brotherly  love,  piety,  devotion,  the 
divine  become  human,— the  Virgin,  the  Apostle,  the  Christ. 
The  artist's  principle  in  the  statue  of  a  great  man  should  be  the 
illustration  of  departed  merit ;  and  I  can  not  but  think  that  a 
skilful  adoption  of  modenuhabiliments  would,  in  many  instances, 
give  a  variety  and  force  of  effect  which  a  bigoted  adherence  to 
Greek  or  Roman  costume  precludes.  It  is,  I  believe,  from  artists 
finding  Greek  models  unfit  for  several  important  modern  purposes, 
that  we  see  so  many  allegorical  figures  on  monuments  and  else- 
where. Painting  was,  as  it  were,  a  new  art,  and  being  un- 
shackled by  old  models  it  chose  its  own  subjects,  and  took  an 
eagle's  flight.  And  a  new  field  seems  opened  for  modern  sculp- 
ture  in  the  symbolical  expression  of  the  ends  of  life,  as  in  Guy's 
monument,  Chantrey's  children  in  Worcester  Cathedral,  &c. 

Architecture  exhibits  the  greatest  extent  of  the  difference  from 
nature  which  may  exist  in  works  of  art.  It  involves  all  the 
powers  of  design,  and  is  sculpture  and  painting  inclusively.  It 
shows  the  greatness  of  man,  and  should  at  the  same  time  teach 
him  humility. 

^  Music  is  the  most  entirely  human  of  the  fine  arts,  and  has  the 
fewest  analoga  in  nature.  Its  first  delightfulness  is  simple  ac- 
pordance  with  the  ear  ;  but  it  is  an  associated  thing,  and  recalls  the 
|ieep  emotions  of  the  past  with  an  intellectual  sense  of  proportion. 
[Every  human  feeling  is  greater  and  larger  than  the  exciting 
pause,— a  proof,  I  think,  that  man  is  designed  for  a  higher  state 
pf  existence  ;  and  this  is  deeply  implied  in  music,  in  which  there 
I  always  something  more  and  beyond  the  immediate  expression. 
j  With  regard  to  works  in  all  the  branches' of  the  fine  arts,  I  may 
femark  that  the  pleasure  arising  from  novelty  must  of  course  be 
plowed  its  due  place  and  weight.  This  pleasure  consists  in  the 
jientity  of  two  opposite  elements,  that  is  to  say — sameness  and 
Variety.  If  in  the  midst  of  the  variety  there  be  not  some  fixed 
Ibject  for  the  attention,  the  unceasing  succession  of  the  variety 

ill  prevent  the  mind  from  observing  the  difference  of  the  indi- 
vidual objects-;  and  the  only  thing  remaining  will  be  the  sncces- 
|on,  which  will  then  produce  precisely  the  same  effect  as  same- 
jess.     This  we  experience  when  we  let  the  trees  or  hedges  pass 


886 


COURSE   OF   LECTURES 


before  the  fixed  eye  during  a  rapid  movement  in  a  carnage,  or 
on  the  other  hand,  when  we  suffer  a  file  of  soldiers  or  ranks  of 
men  in  procession  to  go  on  before  us  without  resting  the  eye  on 
any  one  in  particular.  In  order  to  derive  pleasure  from  the  oc- 
cupation of  the  mind,  the  principle  of  unity  must  always  be  pres- 
ent so  that  in  the  midst  of  the  multeity  the  centripetal  force  be 
never  suspended,  nor  the  sense  be  fatigued  by  the  predominance 
of  the  centrifugal  force.  This  unity  in  multeity  I  have  elsewhere 
stated  as  the  principle  of  beauty.  It  is  equally  the  source  of 
pleasure  in  variety,  and  in  fact  a  higher  term  including  both. 
What  is  the  seclusive  or  distinguishing  term  between  them 

Remember  that  there  is  a  difference  between  form  as  proceed- 
in^  and  shape  as  superinduced  ;— the  latter  is  either  the  death 
or  the  imprisonment  of  the  thing  ;— the  former  is  its  self-witness- 
ing and  self-effected  sphere  of  agency,  (ddd)  Art  would  or  should 
be°the  abridgment  of  nature.  Now  the  fulness  of  nature  is  with- 
out character,  as  water  is  purest  when  without  taste,  smell,  or 
color  ;  (eee)  but  this  is  the  highest,  the  apex  only,— it  is  not  the 
whole.  The  object  of  art  is  to  give  the  whole  ad  hommem ; 
hence  each  step  of  nature  hath  its  ideal,  and  hence  the  possibility 
of  a  climax  up  to  the  perfect  form  of  a  harmonized  chaos. 

To  the  idea  of  life  victory  or  strife  is  necessary  ;  as  virtue  con 
Bists  not  simply  in  the  absence  of  vices,  but  in  the  overcoming  of 
them.  So  it  is  in  beauty.  The  sight  of  what  is  subordinated 
and  conquered  heightens  the  strength  and  the  pleasure  ;  and  this 
should  be  exhibited  by  the  artist  either  inclusively  in  his  figure 
or  else  out  of  it  and  beside  it  to  act  by  way  of  supplement  and 
contrast.  And  with  a  view  to  this,  remark  the  seeming  identity 
of  body  and  mind  in  infants,  and  thence  the  loveliness  of  the  for 
mer  ;  the  commencing  separation  in  boyhood,  and  the  struggle  of 
equilibrium  in  youth  :  thence  onward  the  body  is  first  simply  in- 
different ;  then  demanding  the  translucency  of  the  mind  not  t( 
be  worse  than  indifferent ;  and  finally  all  that  presents  the  bod) 
as  body  becoming  almost  of  an  excremental  nature. 


LECTURE    XIV. 

ON   STYLE. 

I  have,  I  believe,  formerly  observed  with  regard  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  governments  of  the  East,  that  their  tendency  was 
despotic,  that  is,  towards  unity  ;  whilst  that  of  the  Greek  govern- 
ments, on  the  other  hand,  leaned  to  the  manifold  and  the  pop- 
ular, the  unity  in  them  being  purely  ideal,  namely  of  all  as  an 
identification  of  the  whole.  In  the  northern  or  Gothic  nations  the 
aim  and  purpose  of  the  government  were  the  preservation  of  the 
rights  and  interests  of  the  individual  in  conjunction  with  those  of 
the  whole.  The  individual  interest  was  sacred.  In  the  charac- 
ter and  tendency  of  the  Greek  and  Gothic  languages  there  is  pre- 
cisely the  same  relative  difference.  In  Greek  the  sentences  are 
long,  and  the  structure  architectural,  so  that  each  part  or  clause 
is  insignificant  when  compared  with  the  whole.  The  result  is 
every  thing,  the  steps  and  processes  nothing.  But  in  the  Gothic 
and,  generally,  in  what  we  call  the  modern,  languages,  the  struc- 
ture is  short,  simple,  and  complete  in  each  part,  and  the  connec- 
tion of  the  parts  with  the  sum  total  of  the  discourse  is  maintained 
by  the  sequency  of  the  logic,  or  the  community  of  feelings  excited 
between  the  writer  and  his  readers.     As  an  instance  equally  de- 

j  lightful  and  complete,  of  what  may  be  called  the  Gothic  struc- 
ture as  contra-distinguished  from  that  of  the  Greeks,  let  me  cite  a . 

j  part  of  our  famous  Chaucer's  character  of  a  parish  priest  as  ho 

j  should  be.      Can  it  ever  be  quoted  too  often  ? 

A  good  man  ther  was  of  religioun 

That  was  a  poure  Parsone  of  a  toun, 

But  riche  he  was  of  holy  thought  and  werk  ; 

He  was  also  a  lerned  man,  a  clerk, 

That  Cristes  gospel  trewely  wolde  preche  ; 

His  paiishens1  devoutly  wolde  he  teche ; 

1  Parishioners. 
VOL. IV  P 


338  COUKSE   OF  LECTURES. 

Benigne  he  was,  and  wonder1  diligent, 

And  in  adversite  ful  patient, 

And  swiche2  he  was  ypreved3  often  sithea* ; 

Ful  loth  were  him  to  cursen  for  his  tithes, 

But  rather  wolde  he  yeven5  out  of  doute 

Unto  his  poure  parishens  aboute 

Of  his  offring,  and  eke  of  his  substance  ; 

He  coude  in  litel  thing  have  suffisance : 

Wide  was  his  parish,  and  houses  fer  asonder, 

But  he  ne6  left  nought  for  no  rain  ne7  thonder, 

In  sikenesse  and  in  mischief  to  visite 

The  ferrest8  in  his  parish  moche  and  lite9 

Upon  his  fete,  and  in  his  hand  a  staf : 

This  noble  ensample  to  his  shepe  he  yaf,10 

That  first  he  wrought,  and  afterward  he  taught, 

Out  of  the  gospel  he  the  wordes  caught, 

And  this  figure  he  added  yet  thereto, 

That  if  gold  rustc,  what  should  iren  do. 

He  sette  not  his  benefice  to  hire, 
And  lette11  his  shepe  accombred12  in  the  mire, 
And  ran  unto  London  unto  Seint  Poules, 
To  seken  him  a  ckanterie  for  soules, 
Or  with  a  brotherhede  to  be  withold, 
But  dwelt  at  home,  and  kepte  wel  his  fold, 
So  that  the  wolf  ne  made  it  not  miscarie : 
He  was  a  shepherd  and  no  mercenarie ; 
And  though  he  holy  were  and  vertuous, 
He  was  to  sinful  men  not  dispitous,13 
Ne  of  his  speche  dangerous  ne  digne,14 
But  iu  his  teching  discrete  and  benigue, 
To  drawen  folk  to  heven  with  fairenesse, 
By  good  ensample  was  his  besinesse  ; 
But  it  were  any  persone  obstinat, 
What  so  he  were  of  high  or  low  estat, 
Him  wolde  he  snibben15  sharply  for  the  nones : 
A  better  preest  I  trowe  that  no  wher  non  is ; 
He  waited  after  no  pompe  ne  reverence, 
He  maked  him  no  spiced  conscience, 
But  Cristes  love  and  his  apostles'  twelve 
He  taught,  but  first  he  folwed  it  himselve.* 

Such  change  as  really  took  place  in  the  style  of  our  litera* 

1  Wondrous.  2  Such.  3  Proved.         *  Times. 

6  Give  or  have  given.        6  Not.  7  Nor.  8  Farthest. 

9  Great  and  small.  10  Gave.  ll  Left.  ,2  Encumbered 

JS  Despiteous.  14  Proud.  15  Reprove. 

*  Prologue  to  Canterbury  Tales. 


LECTURE  XIV.  339 

ture  after  Chaucer's  time  is  with  difficulty  perceptible,  on  ac- 
count of  the  dearth  of  writers,  during  the  civil  wars  of  the  fif- 
teenth century.  But  the  transition  was  not  very  great  ;  and 
accordingly  we  find  in  Latimer  and  our  other  venerable  authors 
ibout  the  time  of  Edward  VI.  as  in  Luther,  the  general  char- 
acteristics of  the  earliest  manner  ; — that  is,  every  part  popular, 
and  the  discourse  addressed  to  all  degrees  of  intellect ; — the 
sentences  short,  the  tone  vehement,  and  the  connection  of  the 
whole  produced  by  honesty  and  singleness  of  purpose,  intensity 
of  passion,  and  pervading  importance  of  the  subject. 

Another  and  a  very  different  species  of  style  is  that  which 
was  derived  from,  and  founded  on,  the  admiration  and  cultivation 
of  the  classical  writers,  and  which  was  more  exclusively  addressed 
to  the  learned  class  in  society.  I  have  previously  mentioned 
Boccaccio  as  the  original  Italian  introducer  of  this  manner,  and 
the  great  models  of  it  in  English  are  Hooker,  Bacon,  Milton, 
and  Taylor,  although  it  may  be  traced  in  many  other  authors 
of  that  age.  In  all  these  the  language  is  dignified  but  plain, 
genuine  English,  although  elevated  and  brightened  by  superiority 
of  intellect  in  the  writer.  Individual  words  themselves  are 
always  used  by  them  in  their  precise  meaning,  without  either 
affectation  or  slipslop.  The  letters  and  state  papers  of  Sir 
Francis  Walsingham  are  remarkable  for  excellence  in  style  of 
this  description.  In  Jeremy  Taylor  the  sentences  are  often  ex- 
tremely long,  and  yet  are  generally  so  perspicuous  in  consequence 
of  their  logical  structure,  that  they  require  no  perusal  to  be  un- 
derstood ;  and  it  is  for  the  most  part  the  same  in  Milton  and 
Hooker. 

Take  the  following  sentence  as  a  specimen  of  the  sort  of  style 
to  which  I  have  been  alluding  : — 

Concerning  Faith,  the  principal  object  whereof  is  that  eternal  verity 
which  hath  discovered  the  treasures  of  hidden  wisdom  in  Christ ;  concern- 
ing Hope,  the  highest  object  whereof  is  that  everlasting  goodness  which  in 
Christ  doth  quicken  the  dead ;  concerning  Charity,  the  final  object  whereof 
j  is  that  incomprehensible  beauty  which  shineth  in  the  countenance  of  Christ, 
the  Son  of  the  living  God:  concerning  these  virtues,  the  first  of  which  be- 
ginning here  with  a  weak  apprehension  of  things  not  seen,  endeth  with  the 
intuitive  vision  of  God  in  the  world  to  come ;  the  second  beginning  here 
with  a  trembling  expectation  of  things  far  removed,  and  as  yet  but  only 
heard  of,  endeth  with  real  and  actual  fruition  of  that  which  no  tongue  can 
express ;  the  third  beginning  here  with  a  weak  inclination  of  heart  towards 


340  COUKSE   OF  LECTUKES. 

him  unto  whom  we  are  not  able  to  approach,  endeth  with  endless  u  »ioo, 
the  mystery  whereof  is  higher  than  the  reach  of  the  thoughts  of  men  ;  con- 
cerning that  Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity,  without  which  there  can  be  no  sal- 
vation, was  there  ever  any  mention  made  saving  only  in  that  Law  which 
God  himself  hath  from  Heaven  revealed  ?  There  is  not  in  the  world  a 
syllable  muttered  with  certain  truth  concerning  any  of  these  three,  more 
than  hath  been  supernaturally  received  from  the  mouth  of  the  eternal  God. 

Ecclcs.  Pol.  L  s.  11. 


The  unity  in  these  writers  is  produced  by  the  unity  of  the 
subject,  and  the  perpetual  growth  and  evolution  of  the  thoughts, 
one  generating,  and  explaining,  and  justifying,  the  place  of  an- 
other, not,  as  it  is  in  Seneca,  where  the  thoughts,  striking  as  they 
are,  are  merely  strung  together  like  beads,  without  any  causation 
or  progression.  The  words  are  selected  because  they  are  the  most 
appropriate,  regard  being  had  to  the  dignity  of  the  total  impres- 
sion, and  no  merely  big  phrases  are  used  where  plain  ones  would 
have  sufficed,  even  in  the  most  learned  of  their  works. 

There  is  some  truth  in  a  remark,  which  I  believe  was  made 
by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  that  the  greatest  man  is  he  who  forms 
the  taste  of  a  nation,  and  that  the  next  greatest  is  he  who  cor- 
rupts it.  The  true  classical  style  of  Hooker  and  his  fellows  was 
easily  open  to  corruption ;  and  Sir  Thomas  Brown  it  was,  who, 
though  a  writer  of  great  genius,  first  effectually  injured  the  lit- 
erary taste  of  the  nation  by  his  introduction  of  learned  words, 
merely  because  they  were  learned.  It  would  be  difficult  to  de- 
scribe Brown  adequately  ;  exuberant  in  conception  and  conceit, 
dignified,  hyperlatinistic,  a  quiet  and  sublime  enthusiast ;  yet  a 
fantast,  a  humorist,  a  brain  with  a  twist ;  egotistic  like  Mon- 
taigne, yet  with  a  feeling  heart  and  an  active  curiosity,  which, 
however,  too  often  degenerates  into  a  hunting  after  oddities.  In 
his  Hydriotaphia,  and,  indeed,  almost  all  his  works,  the  entire- 
ness  of  his  mental  action  is  very  observable  ;  he  metamorphoses 
every  thing,  be  it  what  it  may,  into  the  subject  under  considera- 
tion. But  Sir  Thomas  Brown  with  all  his  faults  had  a  genuine 
idiom  ;  and  it  is  the  existence  of  an  individual  idiom  in  each, 
that  makes  the  principal  writers  before  the  Restoration  the 
great  patterns  or  integers  of  English  style.  In  them  the  precise 
intended  meaning  of  a  word  can  never  be  mistaken  ;  whereas 
in  the  latter  writers,  as  especially  in  Pope,  the  use  of  words  is 
for  the  most  part  purely  arbitrary,  so  that  the  context  will  rarely 


LECTUilE  XIV.  341 

show  the  true  specific  sense,  but  only  that  something  of  the  sort 
is  designed.  A  perusal  of  the  authorities  cited  by  Johnson  in 
his  dictionary  under  any  leading  word,  will  give  you  a  lively 
sense  of  this  declension  in  etymological  truth  of  expression  in 
the  writers  after  the  Restoration,  or  perhaps,  strictly,  after  the 
middle  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II. 

The  general  characteristic  of  the  style  of  our  literature  down 
to  the  period  which  I  have  just  mentioned,  was  gravity,  and  in 
Milton  and  some  other  writers  of  his  day  there  are  perceptible 
traces  of  the  sternness  of  republicanism.  Soon  after  the  Resto- 
ration a  material  change  took  place,  and  the  cause  of  royalism 
was  graced,  sometimes  disgraced,  by  every  shade  of  lightness  of 
manner.  A  free  and  easy  style  was  considered  as  a  test  of  loy- 
alty, or  at  all  events,  as  a  badge  of  the  cavalier  party  ;  you  may 
detect  it  occasionally  even  in  Barrow,  who  is,  however,  in  gen- 
eral remarkable  for  dignity  and  logical  sequency  of  expression  ; 
but  in  L'Estrange,  Collyer,  and  the  writers  of  that  class,  this 
easy  manner  was  carried  out  to  the  utmost  extreme  of  slang  and 
ribaldry.  Yet  still  the  works,  even  of  these  last  authors,  have 
considerable  merit  in  one  point  of  view  ;  their  language  is  level 
to  the  understandings  of  all  men  ;  it  is  an  actual  transcript  of 
the  colloquialism  of  the  day,  and  is  accordingly  full  of  life  and 
reality.  Roger  North's  life  of  his  brother,  the  Lord  Keeper,  is 
the  most  valuable  specimen  of  this  class  of  our  literature  ;  it  is 
delightful,  and  much  beyond  any  other  of  the  writings  of  his 
contemporaries. 

From  the  common  opinion  that  the  English  style  attained  its 
greatest  perfection  in  and  about  Queen  Anne's  reign  I  altogether 
dissent ;  not  only  because  it  is  in  one  species  alone  in  which  it 
can  be  pretended  that  the  writers  of  that  age  excelled  their  pred- 
ecessors ;  but  also  because  the  specimens  themselves  are  not 
equal,  upon  sound  principles  of  judgment,  to  much  that  had  been 
I  produced  before.  The  classical  structure  of  Hooker — the  im- 
petuous, thought-agglomerating  flood  of  Taylor — to  these  there 
is  no  pretence  of  a  parallel ;  and  for  mere  ease  and  grace,  is 
Cowley  inferior  to  Addison,  being  as  he  is  so  much  more  thought- 
ful and  full  of  fancy  ?  Cowley,  with  the  omission  of  a  quaintness 
here  and  there,  is  probably  the  best  model  of  style  for  modern 
imitation  in  general.  Taylor's  periods  have  been  frequently  at- 
tempted by  his  admirers  ;  you  may,  perhaps,  just  catch  the  turn 


842  COUKSE   OF  LECTURES. 

of  a  simile  or  single  image,  but  to  write  in  the  real  manner  of 
Jeremy  Taylor  would  require  as  mighty  a  mind  as  his.  Many 
parts  of  Algernon  Sidney's  treatises  afford  excellent  exemplars  of 
a  good  modern  practical  style  ;  and  Dryden  in  his  prose  works 
is  a  still  better  model,  if  you  add  a  stricter  and  purer  grammar. 
It  is,  indeed,  worthy  of  remark  that  all  our  great  poets  have 
been  good  prose  writers,  as  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Milton  ;  and  this 
probably  arose  from  their  just  sense  of  metre.  For  a  true  poet 
will  never  confound  verse  and  prose  ;  whereas  it  is  almost  char- 
acteristic of  indifferent  prose  writers  that  they  should  be  constantly 
slipping  into  scraps  of  metre.  Swift's  style  is,  in  its  line,  per- 
fect ;  the  manner  is  a  complete  expression  of  the  matter,  the 
terms  appropriate,  and  the  artifice  concealed.  It  is  simplicity 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word. 

After  the  lie  volution,  the  spirit  of  the  .  nation  became  much 
more  commercial  than  it  had  been  before;  a  learned  body,  or 
clerisy,  as  such,  gradually  disappeared,  and  literature  in  general 
began  to  be  addressed  to  the  common  miscellaneous  public. 
That  public  had  become  accustomed  to,  and  required,  a  strong 
stimulus;  and  to  meet  the  requisitions  of  the  public  taste,  a  style 
was  produced  which  by  combining  triteness  of  thought  with  sin- 
gularity and  excess  of  manner  of  expression,  was  calculated  at 
once  to  soothe  ignorance  and  to  flatter  vanity.  The  thought  was 
carefully  kept  down  to  the  immediate  apprehension  of  the  com- 
monest understanding,  and  the  dress  was  as  anxiously  arranged 
(or  the  purpose  of  making  the  thought  appear  something  very 
profound.  The  essence  of  this  style  consisted  in  a  mock  antith- 
esis, that  is,  an  opposition  of  mere  sounds,  in  a  rage  for  personi- 
fication, the  abstract  made  animate,  far-fetched  metaphors,  strange 
phrases,  metrical  scraps,  in  every  thing,  in  short,  but  genuine 
prose.  Style  is,  of  course,  nothing  else  but  the  art  of  conveying 
the  meaning  appropriately  and  with  perspicuity,  whatever  that 
meaning  may  be,  and  one  criterion  of  style  is  that  it  shall  not  be 
translatable  without  injury  to  the  meaning.  Johnson's  style  has 
pleased  many  from  the  very  fault  of  being  perpetually  translata- 
ble ;  he  creates  an  impression  of  cleverness  by  never  saying  any 
thing  in  a  common  way.  The  best  specimen  of  this  manner  is 
in  Junius,  because  his  antithesis  is  less  merely  verbal  than  John- 
son's. Gibbon's  manner  is  the  worst  of  all;  it  has  every  fault 
of  which  this  peculiar  style  is  capable.     Tacitus  is  an  example 


LECTURE   XIV.  343 

of  it  in  Latin ;  in  coming  from  Cicero  you  feel  the  falsetto  imme- 
diately. 

In  order  to  form  a  good  style,  the  primary  rule  and  condition 
is,  not  to  attempt  to  express  ourselves  in  language  before  we 
thoroughly  know  our  own  meaning : — when  a  man  perfectly  un- 
derstands himself,  appropriate  diction  will  generally  be  at  his 
command  either  in  writing  or  speaking.  In  such  cases  the 
thoughts  and  the  words  are  associated.  In  the  next  place  pre- 
ciseness  in  the  use  of  terms  is  required,  and  the  test  is  whether 
you  can  translate  the  phrase  adequately  into  simpler  terms,  regard 
being  had  to  the  feeling  of  the  whole  passage.  Try  this  upon 
Shakspeare,  or  Milton,  and  see  if  you  can  substitute  other  simpler 
words  in  any  given  passage  without  a  violation  of  the  meaning 
or  tone.  The  source  of  bad  writing  is  the  desire  to  be  something 
more  than  a  man  of  sense, — the  straining  to  be  thought  a  genius  ; 
and  it  is  just  the  same  in  speech-making.  If  men  would  only  say 
what  they  have  to  say  in  plain  terms,  how  much  more  eloquent 
they  would  be  !  Another  rule  is  to  avoid  converting  mere  abstrac- 
tions into  persons.  I  believe  you  will  very  rarely  find  in  any 
great  writer  before  the  Revolution  the  possessive  case  of  an  inani- 
mate noun  used  in  prose  instead  of  the  dependent  case,  as  'the 
watch's  hand,'  for  'the  hand  of  the  watch.'  The  possessive  or 
Saxon  genitive  was  confined  to  persons,  or  at  least  to  animated 
subjects.  And  I  can  not  conclude  this  Lecture  without  insisting 
on  the  importance  of  accuracy  of  style  as  being  near  akin  to  vera 
city  and  truthful  habits  of  mind ;  he  who  thinks  loosely  will  write 
loosely,  and,  perhaps,  there  is  some  moral  inconvenience  in  the 
common  forms  of  our  grammars  which  give  our  children  so  many 
obscure  terms  for  material  distinctions.  Let  me  also  exhort  you 
to  careful  examination  of  what  you  read,  if  it  be  worth  any  perusal 
at  all ;  such  an  examination  will  be  a  safeguard  from  fanaticism, 
the  universal  origin  of  which  is  in  the  contemplation  of  phenomena 
y/ithcut  investigation  into  their  causes. 


ON  THE  PROMETHEUS  OF  vESCHYLUS. 

An  Essay,  preparatory  to  a  series  of  disquisitions  respecting  the  Egyptian, 
in  connection  with  the  sacerdotal,  theology,  and  in  contrast  with  the 
mysteries  of  ancient  Greece.  Read  at  the  Royal  Society  of  Literature 
May  18,  1825. 

The  French  savans  who  went  to  Egypt  in  the  train  of  Bona- 
parte, Denon,  Fourrier,  and  Dupuis  (it  has  been  asserted),  trium- 
phantly vindicated  the  chronology  of  Herodotus,  on  the  authority 
of  documents  that  can  not  lie; — namely,  the  inscriptions  ant 
sculptures  on  those  enormous  masses  of  architecture,  that  might 
seem  to  have  been  built  in  the  wish  of  rivalling  the  mountains 
and  at  some  unknown  future  to  answer  the  same  purpose,  that 
is,  to  stand  the  gigantic  tombstones  of  an  elder  world.  It 
decided,  say  the  critics,  whose  words  I  have  before  cited,  that  the 
present  division  of  the  zodiac  had  been  already  arranged  by  the 
Egyptians  fifteen  thousand  years  before  the  Christian  era,  anc 
according  to  an  inscription  '  which  can  not  lie,'  the  temple  of  Esne 
is  of  eight  thousand  years'  standing. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  among  a  people  who  had  placed  thei 
national  pride  in  their  antiquity,  I  do  not  see  the  impossibility  oJ 
an  inscription  lying  ;  and,  secondly,  as  little  can  I  see  the  improb 
ability  of  a  modern  interpreter  misunderstanding  it ;  and  lastly,  th( 
incredibility  of  a  French  infidel's  partaking  of  both  defects,  is  stil 
less  evident  to  my  understanding.  The  inscriptions  may  be,  an( 
in  some  instances,  very  probably  are,  of  later  date  than  the  tern 
pies  themselves, — the  offspring  of  vanity  or  priestly  rivalry,  or  oj 
certain  astrological  theories ;  or  the  temples  themselves  may  have 
been  built  in  the  place  of  former  and  ruder  structures,  of  an  earlie 
and  ruder  period,  and  not  impossibly  under  a  different  scheme  01 
hieroglyphic  or  significant  characters ;  and  these  may  have  beei 
intentionally,  or  ignorantly,.miscopied  or  mistranslated. 

But  more  than  all  the  preceding, — I  can  not  but  persuade  my 
self,  that  for  a  man  of  sound  judgment  and  enlightened  common 
sense — a  man  with  whom  the  demonstrable  laws  of  the  humai 
mind,  and  the  rules  generalized  from  the  great  mass  of  fact 
respecting  human  nature,  weigh  more  than  any  two  or  thre 
detached  documents  or  narrations,  of  whatever  authority  the  nai 


PROMETHEUS   OF  ^SCHYLUS.  345 

rator  may  be,  and  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  bring  positive 
proofs  against  the  antiquity  of  the  documents — I  can  not  but  per- 
suade myself,  I  say,  that  for  such  a  man,  the  relation  preserved 
in  the  first  book  of  the  Pentateuch, — and  which,  in  perfect  accord- 
ance with  all  analogous  experience,  with  all  the  facts  of  history, 
and  all  that  the  principles  of  political  economy  would  lead  us  to 
anticipate,  conveys  to  us  the  rapid  progress  in  civilization  and 
splendor  from  Abraham  and  Abimelech  to  Joseph  and  Pharaoh, — 
will  be  worth  a  whole  library  of  such  inferences. 

I  am  aware  that  it  is  almost  universal  to  speak  of  the  gross 
idolatry  of  Egypt ;  nay,  that  arguments  have  been  grounded  on 
this  assumption  in  proof  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Mosaic  mono- 
theism. But  first,  if  by  this  we  are  to  understand  that  the  great 
doctrine  of  the  one  Supreme  Being  was  first  revealed  to  the 
Hebrew  legislator,  his  own  inspired  writings  supply  abundant 
and  direct  confutation  of  the  position.  Of  certain  astrological 
superstitions, — of  certain  talismans  connected  with  star-magic, — 
plates  and  images  constructed  in  supposed  harmony  with  the 
movements  and  influences  of  celestial  bodies, — there  doubtless 
exist  hints,  if  not  direct  proofs,  both  in  the  Mosaic  writings,  and 
those  next  to  these  in  antiquity.  But  of  plain  idolatry  in  Egypt, 
or  the  existence  of  a  polytheistic  religion,  represented  by  various 
idols,  each  signifying  a  several  deity,  I  can  find  no  decisive  proof 
in  the  Pentateuch ;  and  when  I  collate  these  with  the  books  of 
the  prophets,  and  the  other  inspired  writings  subsequent  to  the 
Mosaic,  I  can  not  but  regard  the  absence  of  any  such  proof  in  the 
latter,  compared  with  the  numerous  and  powerful  assertions,  or 
evident  implications,  of  Egyptian  idolatry  in  the  former,  both  as 
an  argument  of  incomparatively  greater  value  in  support  of  the 
age  and  authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch;  and  as  a  strong  presump- 
tion in  favor  of  the  hypothesis  on  which  I  shall  in  part  ground  the 
theory  which  will  pervade  this  series  of  disquisitions ; — namely, 
that  the  sacerdotal  religion  of  Egypt  had,  during  the  interval 
from  Abimelech  to  Moses,  degenerated  from  the  patriarchal  mono- 
theism into  a  pantheism,  cosmotheism,  or  worship  of  the  world 
as  God. 

The  reason  or  pretext,  assigned  by  the  Hebrew  legislator  to 
j  Pharaoh  for  leading  his  countrymen  into  the  wilderness  to  join 
;  with  their  brethren,  the  tribes  who  still  sojourned  in  the  nomadic 
|  date,  namely,  that  their  sacrifices  would  be  an  abomination  to 

p* 


346 


IDEA   OF  THE 


the  Egyptians,  may  be  urged  as  inconsistent  with,  nay,  as  con- 
fating  this  hypothesis.     But  to  this  I  reply,  first,  that  the  worship 
of  the  ox  and  cow  was  not,  in  and  of  itself,  and  necessarily,  a  con- 
travention of  the  first  commandment,  though  a  very  gross  breach 
of  the  se3ond  ;— for  it  is  most  certain  that  the  ten  tribes  wor- 
shipped the   Jehovah,  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob, 
under  the  same  or  similar  symbols -.—secondly  that  the  cow,  or 
[sis,  and  the  Io  of  the  Greeks,  truly  represented,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, the  earth  or  productive  nature,  and  afterwards  the  mun- 
dane religion  grounded  on  the  worship  of  nature,  or  the  t6  nav,  as 
God.     In  after-times,  the  ox  or  bull  was  added,  representing  the 
sun,  or  generative  force  of  nature,  according  to  the  habit  of  male 
and  female  deities,  which  spread  almost  over  the  whole  world,— 
the  positive  and  negative  forces  in  the  science  of  superstition  ;— 
for  the  pantheism  of  the  sage  necessarily  engenders  polytheism  as 
the  popular  creed.     But  lastly,  a  very  sufficient  reason  may,  I 
think,  be  assigned  for  the  choice  of  the  ox  or  cow,  as  representing 
the  very  life  of  nature,  by  the  first  legislators  of  Egypt,  and  for 
the  similar  sacred  character  in  the  Brachmanic  tribes  of  Hindos- 
tan.     The  progress  from  savagery  to  civilization  is  evidently  first 
from  the  hunting  to  the  pastoral  state,  a  process  which  even  now 
is  going  on,  within  our  own  times,  among  the  South  American 
Indians  in  the  vast  tracts  between  Buenos  Ayres  and  the  Andes  : 
but  the  second  and  the  most  important  step,  is  from  the  pastoral, 
or  wandering,  to  the  agricultural,  or  fixed,  state.     Now,  if  even 
for  men  born  and  reared  under  European  civilization,  the  charms 
of  a  wandering  life  have  been  found  so  great  a  temptation,  that 
few  who  have  taken  to  it  have  been  induced  to  return  (see  the 
confession  in  the  preamble  to  the  statute  respecting  the  gipsies)  ;* 
—how  much  greater  must  have  been  the  danger  of  relapse  in  the 
first  formation  of  fixed  states  with  a  condensed  population  ?     And 
what  stronger  prevention  could  the   ingenuity  of  the  priestly 
kings— (for  the  priestly  is  ever  the  first  form  of  government)— 
devise,  than  to  have  made  the  ox  or  cow  the  representatives  of 
the  divine  principle  in  the  world,  and,  as  such,  an  object  of  adora- 
tion, the  wilful  destruction  of  which  was  sacrilege  ?— For  this 

*  The  Act  meant  is  probably  the  5  Eliz.  c.  20,  enforcing  the  two  previ- 
ous Acts  of  Henry  VIII.  and  "Philip  and  Mary,  and  reciting  that  natural 
born  Englishmen  had  'become  of  the  fellowship  of  the  said  vagabonds,  b? 
transforming  or  disguising  themselves  in  their  apparel,'  &c.—M. 


PEOMETHEUS  OF  ^SCHYLTTS.  347 

rendered  a  return  to  the  pastoral  state  impossible  ;  in  which  the 
flesh  of  these  animals  and  the  milk  formed  almost  the  exclusive 
food  of  mankind  ;  while,  in  the  meantime,  by  once  compelling  and 
habituating  men  to  the  use  of  a  vegetable  diet,  it  enforced  the  la- 
borious cultivation  of  the  soil,  and  both  produced  and  permitted  a 
vast  and  condensed  population.  In  the  process  and  continued 
subdivisions  of  polytheism,  this  great  sacred  Word, — for  so  the 
consecrated  animals  were  called,  Isgol  Xoyoi, — became  multiplied, 
till  almost  every  power  and  supposed  attribute  of  nature  had  its 
symbol  in  some  consecrated  animal  from  the  beetle  to  the  hawk. 
Wherever  the  powers  of  nature  had  found  a  cycle  for  themselves, 
in  which  the  powers  still  produced  the  same  phenomenon  during 
a  given  period,  whether  in  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  orbs,  or 
in  the  smallest  living  organic  body,  there  the  Egyptian  sages 
predicated  life  and  mind.  Time,  cyclical  time,  was  their  abstrac- 
tion of  the  deity,  and  their  holidays  were  their  gods. 

The  diversity  between  theism  and  pantheism  may  be  most 
simply  and  generally  expressed  in  the  following  formula,  in 
which  the  material  universe  is  expressed  by  W,  and  the  deity 
by  G. 

W  —  G  =  0; 
or  the  World  without   God  is    an  impossible  conception.     This 
position  is  common  to  theist  and  pantheist.     But  the  pantheist 
adds  the  converse — 

G—W-O; 
for  which  the  theist  substitutes — 

G  — W  =  G; 
or  that — 


G  =  G ,  anterior  and  irrelative  to  the  existence  of  the 
world,  is  equal  to  G  +  W.* 
Before  the  mountain?,  ivere,  Thou  art. — I  am  not  about  to  lead 
the  society  beyond  the  bounds  of  my  subject  into  divinity  or 
theology  in  the  professional  sense.  But  without  a  precise  defini- 
tion of  pantheism,  without  a  clear  insight  into  the  essential  dis- 

*  Mr.  Coleridge  was  in  the  constant  habit  of  expressing  himself  on  papei 
by  the  algebraic  symbols.  They  have  an  uncouth  look  in  the  text  of  an 
ordinary  essay,  and  I  have  sometimes  ventured  to  render  them  by  the 
equivalent  words.  But  most  of  the  readers  of  these  volumes  will  know 
that  —  means  less  by,  or,  without ;  -f-  more  by,  or,  in  addition  to  ;  =  equal  to, 
or,  the  same  as. — Ed. 


348  IDEA  OF  THE 

ti notion  between  it  and  the  theism  of  the  Scriptures,  it  appears 
to  me  impossible  to  understand  either  the  import  or  the  history 
of  the  polytheism  of  the  great  historical  nations.  I  beg  leave, 
therefore,  to  repeat,  and  to  carry  on  my  former  position,  that  the 
religion  of  Egypt,  at  the  time  of  the  Exodus  of  the  Hebrews,  was 
a  pantheism,  on  the  point  of  passing  into  that  polytheism,  of 
which  it  afterwards  afforded  a  specimen,  gross  and  distasteful 
even  to  poJytheists  themselves  of  other  nations. 

The  objects  which,  on  my  appointment  as  Royal  Associate  of 
the  Royal  Society  of  Literature,  I  proposed  to  myself  were,  1st. 
The  elucidation  of  the  purpose  of  the  Greek  drama,  and  the  rela- 
tions in  which  it  stood  to  the  mysteries  on  the  one  hand,  and  to 
the  state  or  sacerdotal  religion  on  the  other  : — 2d.  The  connec- 
tion of  the  Greek  tragic  poets  with  philosophy  as  the  peculiar  of£ 
spring  of  Greek  genius  : — 3d.  The  connection  of  the  Homeric 
and  cyclical  poets  with  the  popular  religion  of  the  Greeks :  and, 
lastly  from  all  these, — namely,  the  mysteries,  the  sacerdotal  re- 
ligion, their  philosophy  before  and  after  Socrates,  the  stage,  the 
Homeric  poetry  and  the  legendary  belief  of  the  people,  and  from 
the  sources  and  productive  causes  in  the  derivation  and  confluence 
of  the  tribes  that  finally  shaped  themselves  into  a  nation  of 
Greeks — to  give  a  juster  and  more  distinct  view  of  this  singular 
people,  and  of  the  place  which  they  occupied  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  and  the  great  scheme  of  divine  providence,  than  I  have 
hitherto  seen, — or  rather  let  me  say,  than  it  appears  to  me  possi- 
ble to  give  by  any  other  process. 

The  present  Essay,  however,  I  devote  to  the  purpose  of  remov- 
ing, or  at  least  invalidating,  one  objection  that  I  may  reasonably 
anticipate,  and  which  may  be  conveyed  in  the  following  ques- 
tion : — What  proof  have  you  of  the  fact  of  any  connection  between 
the  Greek  drama,  and  either  the  mysteries,  or  the  philosophy,  of 
Greece  ?  What  proof  that  it  was  the  office  of  the  tragic  poet, 
under  a  disguise  of  the  sacerdotal  religion,  mixed  with  the  legen- 
dary or  popular  belief,  to  reveal  as  much  of  the  mysteries  inter- 
preted by  philosophy,  as  would  counteract  the  demoralizing  effects 
of  the  state  religion,  without  compromising  the  tranquillity  of  the 
state  itself,  or  weakening  that  paramount  reverence,  without 
which  a  republic  (such  I  mean,  as  the  republics  of  ancient 
Greece  were)  could  not  exist  ? 

I  know  no  better  way  in  which  I  can  reply  to  this  objection, 


PKOMETHEUS   OF  ^SCHYLUS.  34-0 

than  by  giving,  as  my  proof  and  instance,  the  Prometheus  of 
iEschylus,  accompanied  with  an  exposition  of  what  I  believe  to 
be  the  intention  of  the  poet,  and  the  mythic  import  of  the  work ; 
of  which  it  may  be  truly  said,  that  it  is  more  properly  tragedy 
itself  in  the  plenitude  of  the  idea,  than  a  particular  tragic  poem  ; 
and  as  a  preface  to  this  exposition,  and  for  the  twin  purpose  of 
rendering  it  intelligible,  and  of  explaining  its  connection  with  the 
whole  scheme  of  my  Essays,  I  entreat  permission  to  insert  a  quo- 
tation from  a  work  of  my  own,  which  has  indeed  been  in  print 
for  many  years,  but  which  few  of  my  auditors  will  probably  have 
heard  of,  and  still  fewcr;  if  any,  have  read. 

"  As  the  representative  of  the  youth  and  approaching  manhood 
of  the  human  intellect  we  have  ancient  Greece,  from  Orpheus, 
Linus,  Musseus,  and  the  other  mythological  bards,  or,  perhaps,  the 
brotherhoods  impersonated  under  those  names,  to  the  time  when 
the  republics  lost  their  independence,  and  their  learned  men  sank 
into  copyists  of,  and  commentators  on,  the  works  of  their  fore- 
fathers. That  we  include  these  as  educated  under  a  distinct 
providential,  though  not  miraculous,  dispensation,  will  surprise 
no  one,  who  reflects,  that  in  whatever  has  a  permanent  operation 
on  the  destinies  and  intellectual  condition  of  mankind  at  large, — 
that  in  all  which  has  been  manifestly  employed  as  a  co-agent  in 
the  mightiest  revolution  of  the  moral  world,  the  propagation  of 
the  Gospel,  and  in  the  intellectual  progress  of  mankind  in  the 
restoration  of  philosophy,  science,  and  the  ingenuous  arts — it  were 
irreligion  not  to  acknowledge  the  hand  of  divine  providence. 
The  periods,  too,  join  on  to  each  other.  The  earliest  Greeks  took 
up  the  religious  and  lyrical  poetry  of  the  Hebrews  ;  and  the 
schools  of  the  prophets  were,  however  partially  and  imperfectly, 
represented  by  the  mysteries  derived  through  the  eorrupt  channel 
of  the  Phoenicians  !  "With  these  secret  schools  of  physiological 
theology,  the  mythical  poets  were  doubtless  in  connection,  and  it 
;  was  these  schools  which  prevented  polytheism  from  producing  all 
its  natural  barbarizing  effects.  The  mysteries  and  the  mythical 
hymns  and  peeans  shaped  themselves  graduallv  into  epic  poetry 
and  history  on  the  one  hand,  and  into  the  ethical  tragedy  and 
philosophy  on  the  other.  Under  their  protection,  and  that  of  a 
•  youthful  liberty,  secretly  controlled  by  a  species  of  internal  the- 
ft ocracy,  the  sciences,  and  the  sterner  kinds  of  the  fine  arts,  that  is, 
1;  architecture  and  statuary,  grew  up  together,  followed,  indeed,  by 


350  IDEA  OF  THE 

painting1,  but  a  statuesque,  and  austerely  idealized,  painting, 
which  did  not  degenerate  into  mere  copies  of  the  sense,  till  the 
process  for  which  Greece  existed  had  been  completed."* 

The  Greeks  alone  brought  forth  philosophy  in  the  proper  and 
contra-distinguishable  sense  of  the  term,  which  we  may  compare 
to  the  coronation  medal  with  its  symbolic  characters,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  coins,  issued  under  the  same  sovereign,  current 
in  the  market.  In  the  primary  sense,  philosophy  had  for  its  aim 
and  proper  subject  the  t«  tisqI  d^wy,  de  originibus  rerum,  as  far 
as  man  proposes  to  discover  the  same  in  and  by  the  pure  reason 
alone.  This,  I  say,  was  the  offspring  of  Greece,  and  elsewhere 
adopted  only.     The  pre-disposition  appears  in  their  earliest  poetry. 

The  first  object  (or  subject-matter)  of  Greek  philosophizing  was 
in  some  measure  philosophy  itself ; — not,  indeed,  as  a  product, 
but  as  the  producing  power — the  productivity.  Great  minds 
turned  inward  on  the  fact  of  the  diversity  between  man  and 
beast ;  a  superiority  of  kind  in  addition  to  that  of  degree  ;  the 
latter,  that  is,  the  difference  in  degree  comprehending  the  more 
enlarged  sphere  and  the  multifold  application  of  faculties  com- 
mon to  man  and  brute  animals  ; — even  this  being  in  great  meas- 
ure a  transfusion  from  the  former,  namely,  from  the  superiority  in 
kind  ; — for  only  by  its  co-existence  with  reason,  free  will,  self- 
consciousness,  the  contra-distinguishing  attributes  of  man,  does  the 
instinctive  intelligence  manifested  in  the  ant,  the  dog,  the  ele- 
phant, &c.  become  human  understanding.  It  is  a  truth  with 
which  Heraclitus,  the  senior,  but  yet  contemporary,  of  iEschylus, 
appears,  from  the  few  genuine  fragments  of  his  writings  that  are 
yet  extant,  to  have  been  deeply  impressed, — that  the  mere  un- 
derstanding in  man,  considered  as  the  power  of  adapting  means 
to  immediate  purposes,  differs,  indeed,  from  the  intelligence  dis- 
played by  other  animals,  and  not  in  degree  only ;  but  yet  does 
not  differ  by  any  excellence  which  it  derives  from  itself,  01  by 
any  inherent  diversity,  but  solely  in  consequence  of  a  combina- 
tion with  far  higher  powers  of  a  diverse  kind  in  pne  and  the 
same  subject. 

Long  before  the  entire  separation  of  metaphysics  from  poetry, 

that  is,  while  yet  poesy,  in  all  its  several  species  of  verse,  music, 

statuary,  &c.  continued  mythic  ; — while  yet  poetry  remained  the 

union  of  the  sensuous  and  the  philosophic  mind  ; — the  efficient 

*  The  Friend,  Essay  ix.  II.  p.  442. 


PROMETHEUS   OF  ^SCHYLUS.  351 

presence  of  the  latter  in  the  synthesis  of  the  two,  had  manifested 
itself  in  the  sublime  mythus  negl  yeveaeojg  iou  vov  iv  avOgomolg^ 
concerning  the  genesis,  or  birth  of  the  vovg  or  reason  in  man. 
This  the  most  venerable,  and  perhaps  the  most  ancient,  of  Grecian 
mythi,  is  a  philosopheme,  the  very  same  in  subject-matter  with 
the  earliest  records  of  the  Hebrews,  but  most  characteristically 
different  in  tone  and  conception ; — for  the  patriarchal  religion,  as 
the  antithesis  of  pantheism,  was  necessarily  personal ;  and  the 
doctrines  of  a  faith,  the  first  ground  of  which,  and  the  primary 
enunciation,  is  the  eternal  I  am,  must  be  in  part  historic,  and 
must  assume  the  historic  form.  Hence  the  Hebrew  record  is  a 
narrative,  and  the  first  instance  of  the  fact  is  given  as  the  origin 
of  the  fact. 

That  a  profound  truth — a  truth  that  is,  indeed,  the  grand  and 
indispensable  condition  of  all  moral  responsibility — is  involved  in 
this  characteristic  of  the  sacred  narrative,  I  am  not  alone  per- 
suaded, but  distinctly  aware.  This,  however,  does  not  preclude 
us  from  seeing,  nay,  as  an  additional  mark  of  the  wisdom  that 
inspired  the  sacred  historian,  it  rather  supplies  a  motive  to  us, 
impels  and  authorizes  us,  to  see,  in  the  form  of  the  vehicle  of  the 
truth,  an  accommodation  to  the  then  childhood  of  the  human 
race.  Under  this  impression  we  may,  I  trust,  safely  consider  the 
narration, — introduced,  as  it  is  here  introduced,  for  the  purpose 
of  explaining  a  mere  work  of  the  unaided  mind  of  man  by  com- 
parison,— as  an  snog  ItooyXvcpixbi', — and  as  such  (apparently,  I 
mean,  not  actually)  &  synthesis  of  poesy  and  philosophy,  charac- 
teristic of  the  childhood  of  nations. 

In  the  Greek  we  see  already  the  dawn  of  approaching  man- 
hood. The  substance,  the  stuff,  is  philosophy ;  the  form  only  is 
poetry.  The  Prometheus  is  a  philosophema  -tavitiyoQixdv, — the 
tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil, — an  allegory,  a  noonaldsv/ida, 
though  the  noblest  and  the  most  pregnant  of  its  kind. 

The  generation  of  the  vovg,  or  pure  reason  in  man.  1.  It  waa 
superadded  or  infused,  a  supra  to  mark  that  it  was  no  mere  evo- 
lution of  the  animal  basis  ; — that  it  could  not  have  grown  out  of 
the  other  faculties  of  man,  his  life,  sense,  understanding,  as  the 
flower  grows  out  of  the  stem,  having  pre-existed  potentially  in 
the  seed  :  2.  The  vovg,  or  fire,  was  *  stolen,' — to  mark  its  hetero — 
or  rather  its  aZ/o-geneity,  that  is,  its  diversity,  its  difference  in 
kind,  from  the  faculties  which  are  common  to  man  with  the 


352  IDEA  OF  THE 

nobler  animals  :  3.  And  stolen  '  from  Heaven,' — to  mark  its  su- 
periority in  kind,  as  well  as  its  essential  diversity  :  4.  And  it  was 
a  '  spark,' — to  mark  that  it  is  not  subject  to  any  modifying  reac- 
tion from  that  on  which  it  immediately  acts  ;  that  it  suffers  no 
change,  and  receives  no  accession,  from  the  inferior,  but  multi- 
plies itself  by  conversion,  without  being  alloyed  by,  or  amalga- 
mated with,  that  which  it  potentiates,  ennobles,  and  transmutes  : 
5.  And  lastly  (in  order  to  imply  the  homogeneity  of  the  donor  and 
of  the  gift),  it  was  stolen  by  a  '  god,'  and  a  god  of  the  race  before 
the  dynasty  of  Jove, — Jove  the  binder  of  reluctant  powers,  the 
coercer  and  entrancer  of  free  spirits  under  the  fetters  of  shape, 
and  mass,  and  passive  mobilily  ;  but  likewise  by  a  god  of  the 
same  race  and  essence  with  Jove,  and  linked  of  yore  in  closest 
and  friendliest  intimacy  with  him.  This,  to  mark  the  pre-exist- 
ence,  in  order  of  thought,  of  the  nous,  as  spiritual,  both  to  the 
objects  of  sense,  and  to  their  products,  formed  as  it  were,  by  the 
precipitation,  or,  if  I  may  dare  adopt  the  bold  language  of  Leib- 
nitz, by  a  coagulation  of  spirit.^  In  other  words  this  derivation 
of  the  spark  from  above,  and  from  a  god  anterior  to  the  Jovial 
dynasty — (that  is,  to  the  submersion  of  spirits  in  material  forms), 
— was  intended  to  mark  the  transcendency  of  the  nous,  the  con- 
tra-distinctive faculty  of  man,  as  timeless,  uxqovov  ™,  and,  in  this 
negative  sense,  eternal.  It  signified,  I  say,  its  superiority  to,  and 
its  diversity  from,  all  things  that  subsist  in  space  and  time,  nay, 
even  those  which,  though  spaceless,  yet  partake  of  time,  namely, 
souls  or  understandings.  For  the  soul,  or  understanding,  if  it  be 
defined  physiologically  as  the  principle  of  sensibility,  irritability, 
and  growth,  together  with  the  functions  of  the  organs,  which  are 
at  once  the  representations  and  the  instruments  of  these,  must  be 
considered  in  genere,  though  not  in  degree  or  dignity,  common  to 
man  and  the  inferior  animals.  It  was  the  spirit,  the  nous,  which 
man  alone  possessed.  And  I  must  be  permitted  to  suggest  that 
this  notion  deserves  some  respect,  were  it  only  that  it  can  show 
a  semblance,  at  least,  of  sanction  from  a  far  higher  authority. 

*  Schelling  ascribes  this  expression,  which  I  have  not  been  able  to  fin  i 
in  the  words  of  Leibnitz,  to  Hemsterhuis  :  "  When  Leibnitz,"  says  he,  "  calls 
matter  the  sleep-state  of  the  Monads,  or  when  Hemsterhuis  calls  it  curdled 
spirit, — den  geronnenen  Gent. — In  fact,  matter  is  no  other  than  spirit  con- 
templated in  the  equilibrium  of  its  activities." — Trail  si.  Transsc.  Ideal,  p 
190.— S.  C. 


PROMETHEUS   OF  ^ESCHYLUS.  353 

The  Greeks  agreed  with  the  cosmogonies  of  the  East  in  deriv- 
ing all  sensible  forms  from  the  indistinguishable.     The  latter  we 
find  designated  as  the  to  atuogcpov}  the  vdwg  nqoxoofuxov,  the  %<xog, 
as  the  essentially  unintelligible,  yet  necessarily  presumed,  basis  or 
sub-position  of  all  positions.     That  it  is,  scientifically  considered, 
an  indispensable  idea  for  the  human  mind,  just  as  the  mathe- 
matical point,  &c.  for  the  geometrician  ; — of  this  the  various  sys- 
tems of  our  geologists  and  cosmogonists,  from  Burnet  to  La  Place, 
afford  strong  presumption.     As  an  idea,  it  must  be  interpreted  as 
a  striving  of  the  mind  to  distinguish  being  from  existence— or 
potential  being,  the  ground  of  being  containing  the  possibility  of 
existence,  from  being  actualized.     In  the  language  of  the  myste- 
ries, it  was  the  esurzence,  the  nudog  or  desideratum,  the  unfu- 
elled  fire,  the  Ceres,  the  ever-seeking  maternal  goddess,  the  ori- 
gin and  interpretation  of  whose  name  is  found  in  the  Hebrew 
root  signifying  hunger,  and  thence  capacity.     It  was,  in  short,  an 
effort  to  represent  the  universal  ground  of  all  differences  distinct 
or  opposite,  but  in  relation  to  which  all  antithesis  as  well  as  all 
antitheta,  existed  only  potentially.     This  was  the  container  and 
withholder  (such  is  the  primitive  sense  of  the  Hebrew  word  ren- 
dered darkness  (Gen.  i,  2)  )  out  of  which  light,  that  is,  the  lux 
lucijica,  as  distinguished  from  lumen  seu  lux  phamomenalis  was 
produced  ;— say,  rather,  that  which,  producing  itself  into  light  as 
the  one  pole  or  antagonist  power,  remained  in  the  other  pole  as 
darkness,  that  is,  gravity,  or  the  principle  of  mass,  or  wholeness 
without  distinction  of  parts. 

And  here  the  peculiar,  the  philosophic,  genius  of  Greece  began 
its  foetal  throb.  Here  it  individualized  itself  in  contradistinction 
from  the  Hebrew  archaeology,  on  the  one  side,  and  from  the  Phoe- 
nician, on  the  other.  The  Phoenician  confounded  the  indistin- 
guishable with  the  absolute,  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  ineffa- 
ble causa  mi.  It  confounded,  I  say,  the  multeity  below  intellect, 
that  is,  unintelligible  from  defect  of  the  subject,  with  the  absolute 
identity  above  all  intellect,  that  is,  transcending  comprehension 
by  the  plenitude  of  its  excellence.  With  the  Phoenician  sages  the 
cosmogony  was  their  theogony  and  vice  versa.  Hence,  too, 
jflowed  their  theurgic  rites,  their  magic,  their  worship  (cultus  el 
apotheosis)  of  the  plastic  forces,  chemical  and  vital,  and  these,  or 
their  notions  respecting  these,  formed  tie  hidden  meaning,  the 


354  IDEA  OF  THE 

soul,  as  it  weie,  of  which  the  popular  and  civil  worship  was  the 
body  with  its  drapery. 

The  Hebrew  wisdom  imperatively  asserts  an  unbeginning  cre- 
ative One,  who  neither  became  the  world  ;  nor  is  the  world  eter- 
nally;  nor  made  the  world  out  of  himself  by  emanation,  or  evo- 
lution ; — but  who  willed  it,  and  it  was  !  Tu  udea  iyivsro,  teal 
iyevETo  %uog, — and  this  chaos,  the  eternal  will,  by  the  spirit  and 
the  word,  or  express  fiat — again  acting  as  the  impregnant,  dis- 
tinctive, and  ordonnant  power — enabled  to  become  a  world — > 
xoojuelodai.  So  must  it  be  when  a  religion,  that  shall  preclude 
superstition  on  the  one  hand,  and  brute  indifference  on  the  other, 
is  to  be  true  for  the  meditative  sage,  yet  intelligible,  or  at  least 
apprehensible,  for  all  but  the  fools  in  heart. 

The  Greek  philosopheme,  preserved  for  us  in  the  JEschylean 
Prometheus,  stands  midway  betwixt  both,  yet  is  distinct  in  kind 
from  either.  With  the  Hebrew  or  purer  Semitic,  it  assumes  an 
X  Y  Z — (I  take  these  letters  in  their  algebraic  application) — an 
indeterminate  EloJmn,  antecedent  to  the  matter  of  the  world. 
vh]  axoajuog — no  less  than  to  the  vlij  xexoajurj/uipi].  In  this  point, 
likewise,  the  Greek  accorded  with  the  Semitic,  and  differed  from 
the  Phoenician — that  it  held  the  antecedent  X  Y  Z  to  be  super- 
sensuous  and  divine.  But  on  the  other  hand,  it  coincides  with 
the  Phoenician  in  considering  this  antecedent  ground  of  corporeal 
matter — imp  aui^aioiv  xal  rov  ao)^aiixov, — not  so  properly  the 
cause  of  the  latter,  as  the  occasion  and  the  still  continuing  sub- 
stance. Materia  substat  adhuc.  The  corporeal  was  supposed 
co-essential  with  the  antecedent  of  its  corporeity.  Matter,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  body,  was  a  non  ens,  a  simple  apparition,  id 
quod  mere  videtur  ;  but  to  body  the  elder  physico-theology  of  the 
Greeks  allowed  a  participation  in  entity.  It  was  spiritus  ipse, 
oppressus,  dormiens,  et  diversis  modis  somnians.  In  short,  body 
was  the  productive  power  suspended,  and  as  it  were,  quenched 
in  the  product.  This  may  be  rendered  plainer  by  reflecting,  that, 
in  the  pure  Semitic  scheme  there  are  four  terms  introduced  in  the 
solution  of  the  problem,  1.  the  beginning,  self-sufficing,  and  im- 
mutable  Creator ;  2.  the  antecedent  night  as  the  identity,  or  in- 
cluding germ,  of  the  light  and  darkness,  that  is,  gravity  ;  3.  the 
chaos  ;  and  4.  the  material  world  resulting  from  the  powers  com- 
municated by  the  divine  fiat.  In  the  Phoenician  scheme  there 
are  in  fact  but  two — a  self-organizing  chaos,  and  the  omnifbrm 


PJiOMETHEUS  OF  ^SCHYLUS.  855 

jiature  as  the  result.  In  the  Greek  scheme  we  have  three  terms, 
1.  the  hyle  vlrif  which  holds  the  place  of  the  chaos,  or  the  waters, 
in  the  true  system  ;  2.  tu  ctwu«t«,  answering  to  the  Mosaic  heaven 
and  earth ;  and  3.  the  Saturnian  xQ°t/ov  tneQxgovioi, — which 
answer  to  the  antecedent  darkness  of  the  Mosaic  scheme,  but  to 
which  the  elder  physico-theologists  attributed  a  self-polarizing 
power — a  natura  gemma  qncejit  et  facil,  agit  et  patitur.  In 
other  words,  the  Elohim  of  the  Greeks  were  still  but  a  natura 
deorum,  to  Oelov,  in  which  a  vague  plurality  adhered  ;  or  if  any 
unity  was  imagined,  it  was  not  personal — not  a  unity  of  excel- 
lence, but  simply  an  expression  of  the  negative — that  which  was 
to  pass,  but  which  had  not  yet  passed,  into  distinct  form. 

All  this  will  seem  strange  and  obscure  at  first  reading — per- 
haps fantastic.  But  it  will  only  seem  so.  Dry  and  prolix,  in- 
deed, it  is  to  me  in  the  writing,  full  as  much  as  it  can  be  to 
others  in  the  attempt  to  understand  it.  But  I  know  that,  once 
mastered,  the  idea  will  be  the  key  to  the  whole  cypher  of  the 
JEschylean  mythology.  The  surri  stated  in  the  terms  of  philo- 
sophic logic  is  this :  First,  what  Moses  appropriated  to  the  chaos 
itself:  what  Moses  made  passive  and  a  materia  subjecta  et  lucis 
et  tenebrarum,  the  containing  nqodifxevov  of  the  thesis  and 
antithesis  ; — this  the  Greek  placed  anterior  to  the  chaos ; — the 
chaos  itself  being  the  struggle  between  the  hyper chroma,  the 
Idiut,  nqovofioi,  as  the  unevolved,  unproduced,  prothesis,  of  which 
Idea  xal  voftog — (idea  and  law) — are  the  thesis  and  antithesis. 
(I  use  the  word  '  produced'  in  the  mathematical  sense,  as  a  point 
elongating  itself  to  a  bipolar  line.)  Secondly,  what  Moses  estab- 
lishes, not  merely  as  a  transcendant  Monas,  but  as  an  individual 
\  zEvag  likewise  ; — this  the  Greek  took  as  a  harmony,  deol  bdavuioi, 
to  delop,  as  distinguished  from  o  debs — or,  to  adopt  the  more  ex- 
pressive language  of  the  Pythagoreans  and  cabalists  nume?i  nu- 
i   merantis;  and  these  are  to  be  contemplated  as  the  identity. 

Now  according  to  the  Greek  philosopheme  or  mythus,  in  these, 
I  or  in  this  identity,  there  arose  a  war,  schism,  or  division,  that  is, 
a  polarization  into  thesis  and  antithesis.  In  consequence  of  this 
I  schism  in  the  to  delov,  the  thesis  becomes  nomos,  or  law,  and  the 
f  antithesis  becomes  idea,  but  so  that  the  nomos  is  nomos,  because, 
I  and  only  because,  the  idea  is  idea  :  the  nomos  is  not  idea,  only 
i  because  the  idea  has  not  become  nomos.  And  this  not  must  be 
:  heed  fully  borne  in  mind  through  the  whole  interpretation  of  this 


35G  IDEA  OF  THE 

most  profound  and  pregnant  philosopheme.  The  nomos  is  essen 
tially  idea,  but  essentially  it  is  idea  sufctans,  that  is,  id  quod  stai 
subtus,  understanding  sensu  generalissimo.  The  idea,  which 
now  is  no  longer  idea,  has  substantiated  itself,  become  real  as 
opposed  to  idea,  and  is  henceforward,  therefore,  substans  in  sub- 
stantiate. The  first  product  of  its  energy  is  the  thing  itself: 
ipsa  se  posuit  etjam  facta  est  ens  positum.  Still,  however,  its 
productive  energy  is  not  exhausted  in  this  product,  but  overflows, 
or  is  effluent,  as  the  specific  forces,  properties,  faculties,  of  the 
product.  It  re-appears,  in  short,  in  the  body,  as  the  function  of 
the  body.  As  a  sufficient  illustration,  though  it  can  not  be 
offered  as  a  perfect  instance,  take  the  following. 

'  In  the  world  we  see  everywhere  evidences  of  a  unity,  which 
the  component  parts  are  so  far  from  explaining,  that  they  neces- 
sarily presuppose  it  as  the  cause  and  condition  of  their  existing 
as  those  parts,  or  even  of  their  existing  at  all.  This  antecedent 
unity,  or  cause  and  principle  of  each  union,  it  has,  since  the  time 
of  Bacon  and  Kepler,  been  customary  to  call  a  law.  This  crocus, 
for  instance,  or  any  flower  the  reader  may  have  in  sight  or  choose 
to  bring  before  his  fancy  ; — that  the  root,  stem,  leaves,  petals, 
&c.  cohere  as  one  plant,  is  owing  to  an  antecedent  power  or  prin- 
ciple in  the  seed,  which  existed  before  a  single  particle  of  the 
matters  that  constitute  the  size  and  visibility  of  the  crocus  had 
been  attracted  from  the  surrounding  soil,  air,  and  moisture. 
Shall  we  turn  to  the  seed  ?  Here  too  the  same  necessity  meets 
us,  an  antecedent  unity  (I  speak  not  of  the  parent  plant,  but  of 
an  agency  antecedent  in  order  of  operance,  yet  remaining  present 
as  the  conservative  and  reproductive  power),  must  here  too  be 
supposed.  Analyze  the  seed  with  the  finest  tools,  and  let  the 
solar  microscope  come  in  aid  of  your  senses — what  do  you  find  ? 
means  and  instruments,  a  wondrous  fairy-tale  of  nature,  maga- 
zines of  food,  stores  of  various  sorts,  pipes,  spiracles,  defences — a. 
house  of  many  chambers,  and  the  owner  and  inhabitant  invisi- 
ble.^ Now,  compare  a  plant  thus  contemplated  with  an  ani 
mal.  In  the  former,  the  productive  energy  exhausts  itself,  and 
as  it  were,  sleeps  in  the  product  or  organismus — in  its  root,  stem, 
foliage,  blossoms,  seed.  Its  balsams,  gums,  resins,  aromata,  and 
all  other  bases  of  its  sensible  qualities,  are,  it  is  well  known, 

*  Aids  to  Reflection.    Moral  and  Religious  Aphorisms,     Aphorism  VI 
—Ed. 


PROMETHEUS   OF  ^ESCHYLUS.  857 

mere  excretions  from  the  vegetable,  eliminated,  as  lifeless,  from 
the  actual  plant.  The  qualities  are  not  its  properties,  hut  the 
properties,  or  far  rather,  the  dispersion  and  volatilization  of  these 
extruded  and  rejected  bases.  But  in  the  animal  it  is  otherwise 
Here  the  antecedent  unity — the  productive  and  self-realizing 
idea — strives,  with  partial  success,  to  re-emancipate  itself  from 
its  product,  and  seeks  once  again  to  become  idea  :  vainly  indeed  : 
for  in  order  to  this,  it  must  be  retrogressive,  and  it  hath  subjected 
itself  to  the  fates,  the  evolvers  of  the  endless  thread — to  the  stern 
necessity  of  progression.  Idea  itself  it  can  not  become,  but  it 
may  in  long  and  graduated  process,  become  an  image,  an  anal- 
ogon,  an  anti-type  of  idea.  And  this  sl'duXov  may  approximate 
to  a  perfect  likeness.  Quod  est  simile  ?iequit  esse  idem.  Thus. 
in  the  lower  animals,  we  see  this  process  of  emancipation  com- 
mence with  the  intermediate  link,  or  that  which  forms  the  tran- 
sition from  properties  to  faculties,  namely,  with  sensation.  Then 
the  faculties  of  sense,  locomotion,  construction,  as,  for  instance, 
webs,  hives,  nests,  &c.  Then  the  functions ;  as  of  instinct, 
memory,  fancy,  instinctive  intelligence,  or  understanding,  as  it 
exists  in  the  most  intelligent  animals.  Thus  the  idea  (hencefor- 
ward no  more  idea,  but  irrecoverable  by  its  own  fatal  act)  com- 
mences the  process  of  its  own  transmutation,  as  substans  in  sub- 
stantiate, as  the  enteleche,  or  the  vis  formatrix,  and  it  finishes 
the  process  as  substans  e  substantiate),  that  is,  as  the  under- 
standing. 

If,  for  the  purpose  of  elucidating  this  process,  I  might  be  allow- 
ed to  imitate  the  symbolic  language  of  the  algebraists,  and  thus 
to  regard  the  successive  steps  of  the  process  as  so  many  powers 
and  dignities  of  the  nomos  or  law,  the  scheme  would  be  repre- 
sented thus  : — 

Nomos1   =  Product :  N2  —   Property  :  N3  =  Faculty  : 
N4  =  Function  :  N5  =  Understanding  ; — 

which  is,  indeed,  in  one  sense,  itself  a  nomos,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
the  index  of  the  nomos,  as  well  as  its  highest  function ;  but,  like 
the  hand  of  a  watch,  it  is  likewise  a  nomizomenon.  It  is  a  verb, 
but  still  a  verb  passive. 

On  the  other  hand,  idea  is  so  far  co-essential  with  nomos,  that 
by  its  co-existence — (not  confluence) — with  the  nomos  iv  vopi^o- 
pivoig  (with  the  organism/us  and  its  faculties  and  functions  in  the 


358  IDEA  OF  THE 

man),  it  becomes  itself  a  nomos.  But,  observe,  a  nomos  autono- 
mos,  or  containing  its  law  in  itself  likewise  ; — even  as  the  nomos 
produces  for  its  highest  product  the  understanding,  so  the  idea,  in 
its  opposition  and,  of  course,  its  correspondence  to  the  nomos,  be- 
gets in  itself  an  analogon  to  product ;  and  this  is  self-conscious- 
ness. But  as  the  product  can  never  become  idea,  so  neither  can 
the  idea  (if  it  is  to  remain  idea)  become  or  generate  a  distinct 
product.  This  analogon  of  product  is  to  be  itself ;  but  were  it 
indeed  and  substantially  a  product,  it  would  cease  to  be  self.  It 
would  be  an  object  for  a  subject,  not  (as  it  is  and  must  be)  an 
object  that  is  its  own  subject,  and  vice  versa ;  a  conception 
which,  if  the  uncombining  and  infusile  genius  of  our  language 
allowed  it,  might  be  expressed  by  the  term  subject-object.  Now, 
idea,  taken  in  indissoluble  connection  with  this  analogon  of  prod- 
uct is  mind,  that  which  knows  itself,  and  the  existence  of  which 
may  be  inferred,  but  can  not  appear  or  become  a  'phenomenon. 

By  the  benignity  of  Providence,  the  truths  of  most  importance 
in  themselves,  and  which  it  most  concerns  us  to  know,  are  famil- 
iar to  us,  even  from  childhood.  Well  for  us  if  we  do  not  abuse 
this  privilege,  and  mistake  the  familiarity  of  words  which  convey 
these  truths,  for  a  clear  understanding  of  the  truths  themselves ! 
If  the  preceding  disquisition,  with  all  its  subtlety  and  all  its  ob- 
scurity, should  answer  no  other  purpose,  it  will  still  have  been 
neither  purposeless,  nor  devoid  of  utility,  should  it  only  lead 
us  to  sympathize  with  the  strivings  of  the  human  intellect, 
awakened  to  the  infinite  importance  of  the  inward  oracle  yv&dt 
aeuviov — and  almost  instinctively  shaping  its  course  of  search  in 
conformity  with  the  Platonic  intimation — yvx*\$  yvaiv  a^lwg  Xoyou 
xuTuvoijaai,  oi'ei  dwaiov  elvui,  avev  ttj?  tov  oXov  (fvoeatg ;  but  be 
this  as  it  may,  the  groundwork  of  the  iEschylean  mythus  is  laid  in 
the  definition  of  idea  and  law,  as  correlatives  that  mutually  in- 
terpret each  the  other  ; — an  idea,  with  the  adequate  power  of 
realizing  itself  being  a  law,  and  a  law  considered  abstractedly 
from,  or  in  the  absence  of,  the  power  of  manifesting  itself  in  its 
appropriate  product  being  an  idea.  "Whether  this  be  true  phl'os- 
ophy,  is  not  the  question.  The  school  of  Aristotle  would,  of 
course,  deny,  the  Platonic  affirm  it ;  for  in  this  consists  the  dif- 
ference of  the  two  schools.  Both  acknowledge  ideas  as  distinct 
from  the  mere  generalizations  from  objects  of  sense  :  both  would 
define  an  idea  as  an  ens  rationale,  to  which  there  can  be  no 


PROMETHEUS  OF  ^SCHYLUS.  859 

adequate  correspondent  in  sensible  experience.  But,  according  to 
Aristotle,  ideas  are  regulative  only,  and  exist  only  as  functions  of 
the  mind  : — according  to  Plato,  they  are  constitutive  likewise,  and 
one  in  essence  with  the  power  and  life  of  nature  ; — ev  I6ya>  tcoi) 
fy,  xal  -q  £u»)  i\v  to  q>(bg  twp  uvdountov.  And  this  I  assert  was  the 
philosophy  of  the  mythic  poets,  who,  like  iEschylus,  adapted  the 
secret  doctrines  of  the  mysteries  as  the  (not  always  safely  disguis- 
ed) antidote  to  the  debasing  influences  of  the  religion  of  the 
state. 

But  to  return  and  conclude  this  preliminary  explanation.  "We 
have  only  to  substitute  the  term  will,  and  the  term  constitutive 
power,  for  nomos  or  law,  and  the  process  is  the  same.  Permit 
me  to  represent  the  identity  or  prothesis  by  the  letter  Z  and  the 
thesis  and  antithesis  by  X  and  Y  respectively.  Then  I  say  X  by 
not  being  Y,  but  in  consequence  of  being  the  correlative  opposite 
of  Y,  is  will ;  and  Y,  by  not  being  X,  but  the  correlative  and  op- 
posite of  X,  is  nature,  natura  naturans,  vojAog  cpvamog.  Hence 
we  may  see  the  necessity  of  contemplating  the  idea  now  as  iden- 
tical with  the  reason,  and  now  as  one  with  the  will,  and  now  as 
both  in  one,  in  which  last  case  I  shall,  for  convenience'  sake,  em- 
ploy the  term  Nous,  the  rational  will,  the  practical  reason. 

We  are  now  out  of  the  holy  jungle  of  transcendental  meta- 
physics ;  if  indeed,  the  reader's  patience  shall  have  had  strength 
and  persistency  enough  to  allow  me  to  exclaim — 

Ivimus  ambo 
Per  densas  umbras  :  at  tenet  umbra  Deum. 

Not  that  I  regard  the  foregoing  as  articles  of  faith,  or  as  all  true  " 
— I  have  implied  the  contrary  by  contrasting  it  with,  at  least,  by 
showing  its  disparateness  from,  the  Mosaic,  which,  bona  fide,  I 
do  regard  as  the  truth.  But  I  believe  there  is  much,  and  pro- 
found, truth  in  it,  supra  captum  ipdoooywv,  qui  non  agnoscunt 
divinum,  ideoque  nee  naturam,  nisi  nomine,  agnoscunt ;  sed 
res  cunctas  ex  sensuali  corporeo  cogitant,  quibus  hac  ex  causa 
interiora  clausa  manent,  et  simul  cum  Mis  exteriora  quce  prox- 
ima  interioribus  sunt !  And  with  no  less  confidence  do  I  be- 
lieve that  the  positions  above  given,  true  or  false,  are  contained 
in  the  Promethean  mythus. 

In  this  mythus,  Jove  is  the  impersonated  representation  or 
symbol  of  the  nomos — Jupiter  est  quodcunque   vides.      He   is 


360  IDEA  OF  THE 

the  mens  agitans  molem,  but  at  the  same  time,  the  molem  cor- 
poream  ponens  et  constituens.  And  so  far  the  Greek  philosopheme 
does  not  differ  essentially  from  the  cosmotheism,  or  identification 
of  God  with  the  universe,  in  which  consisted  the  first  apostasy  of 
mankind  after  the  flood,  when  they  combined  to  raise  a  temple  to 
the  heavens,  and  which  is  still  the  favored  religion  of  the  Chinese. 
Prometheus,  in  like  manner,  is  the  impersonated  representative  of 
Idea,  or  of  the  same  power  as  Jove,  but  contemplated  as  inde- 
pendent and  not  immersed  in  the  product, — as  law  minus  the 
productive  energy.  As  such  it  is  next  to  be  seen  what  the  several 
significances  of  each  must  or  may  be  according  to  the  philo- 
sophic conception  ;  and  of  which  significances,  therefore,  should  Ave 
find  in  the  philosopheme  a  correspondent  to  each,  we  shall  be 
entitled  to  assert  that  such  are  the  meanings  of  the  fable.  And 
first  of  Jove  : — 

!love  represents  1.  Nomos  generally,  as  opposed  to  Idea  or  Nous; 
2.  Nomos  archinomos,  now  as  the  father,  now  as  the  sovereign, 
and  now  as  the  includer  and  representative  of  the  vo/uoi  ovqolpioi 
xoo[aixoI,  or  dii  majores,  who  had  joined  or  come  over  to  Jove  in 
the  first  schism :  3.  Nomos  da/xvyirig — the  subjugator  of  the  spirits, 
of  the  ideui  ngovo/uoi,  who,  thus  subjugated,  became  vofioc  Tunovofiwi 
xjTToonopdoi,  Titanes  pacati,  dii  minores,  that  is,  the  elements 
considered  as  powers  reduced  to  obedience  under  yet  higher  pow- 
ers than  themselves  :  4.  Nomos  noliTixog,  law  in  the  Pauline 
sense,  ro/uog  aXkoTQiofOfiog  in  antithesis  to  vouog  avidfopog. 

COROLLAE.Y. 

It  is  in  this  sense  that  Jove's  jealous,  ever-quarrelsome  spouse 
represents  the  political  sacerdotal  cidtus,  the  church,  in  short,  of 
republican  paganism  ; — a  church  by  law  established  for  the  mere 
purposes  of  the  particular  state,  unennobled  by  the  consciousness 
of  instrumentality  to  higher  purposes  ; — at  once  unenlightened 
and  unchecked  by  revelation.  Most  gratefully  ought  we  to  ac- 
knowledge that  since  the  completion  of  our  constitution  in  1688, 
we  may,  with  unflattering  truth,  elucidate  the  spirit  and  charac- 
ter of  such  a  church  by  the  contrast  of  the  institution,  to  which 
England  owes  the  larger  portion  of  its  superiority  in  that,  in  which 
alone  superiority  is  an  unmixed  blessing, — the  diffused  cultivation 
of  its  inhabitants.      But  previously  to  this  period,   I  shall  offend 


PHOMETHEUS   OF  .ESCHYLUS.  861 

no  enlightened  man  if  I  say  without  distinction  of  parties — intra 
muros  peccatur  et  extra  ; — that  the  history  of  Christendom  pre- 
sents us  with  too  many  illustrations  of  this  Junonian  jealousy,  this 
factious  harassing  of  the  sovereign  power  as  soon  as  the  latter  be- 
trayed any  symptoms  of  a  disposition  to  its  true  policy,  namely, 
to  privilege  and  perpetuate  that  which  is  best, — to  tolerate  the 
tolerable, — and  to  restrain  none  but  those  who  would  restrain  all, 
and  subjugate  even  the  state  itself.  But  while  truth  extorts  this 
confession,  it,  at  the  same  time,  requires  that  it  should  be  accom- 
panied by  an  avowal  of  the  fact,  that  the  spirit  is  a  relic  of  Pa- 
ganism ;  and  with  a  bitter  smile  would  an  iEschylus  or  a  Plato 
in  the  shades,  listen  to  a  Gibbon  or  a  Hume  vaunting  the  mild 
and  tolerant  spirit  of  the  state  religions  of  ancient  Greece  or 
Rome.  Here  we  have  the  sense  of  Jove's  intrigues  with  Europa, 
Io,  &c,  whom  the  god,  in  his  own  nature  a  general  lover,  had 
successively  taken  under  his  protection.  And  here,  too,  see  the 
full  appropriateness  of  this  part  of  the  mythus,  in  which  symbol 
fades  away  into  allegory,  but  yet  in  reference  to  the  working 
cause,  as  grounded  in  humanity,  and  always  existing  either  actu- 
ally or  potentially,  and  thus  never  ceases  wholly  to  be  a  symbol 
or  tautegory. 

Prometheus  represents,  1.  sensu  generally  Idea  ngovofiog,  and 
in  this  sense  he  is  a  deog  o/uocpvlog,  a  fellow-tribesman  both  of  the 
dii  majores,  with  Jove  at  their  head,  and  of  the  Titans  or  dii 
pacati  :  2.  He  represents  Idea  ydovopog,  vonodelxT^g  •  and  in  this 
sense  the  former  friend  and  counsellor  of  Jove  or  Nous  uranius  > 
3.  Aoyog  qjtXufdgojnog,  the  divine  humanity,  the  humane  God,  who 
retained  unseen,  kept  back,  or  (in  the  catachresis  characteristic 
Cof  the  Phoenicio-Grecian  mythology)  stole,  a  portion  or  ignicula 
from  the  living  spirit  of  law,  which  remained  with  the  celestial 
gods  unexpended  lv  tw  voiiiQeadai.  He  gave  that  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  whole  analogy  of  things,  should  have  existed  as  pure 
divinity,  the  sole  property  and  birth-right  of  the  Dii  Joviales,  the 
TJr  anions,  or  was  conceded  to  inferior  beings  as  a  substans  in  sub- 
stantiate. This  spark  divine  Prometheus  gave  to  an  elect,  a  fa 
vored  animal,  not  as  a  substans  or  understanding,  commensurate 
with,  and  confined  by,  the  constitution  and  conditions  of  this  par- 
ticular organism,  but  as  aliquid  super  stuns,  iiberum,  non  subac- 
turn,  invictum,  impacatum,  ^  voptifinGvov .  This  gift,  by  which 
we  are  to  understand  reason  theoretical  and  practical,  was  there- 

\     VOL.     IV.  Q, 


IDEA   OF   THE 


... 


fore  a  vojuog  aixovofiog — unapproachable  and  unmodinable  by  the 
animal  basis — that  is,  by  the  pre-existing  substans  with  its  prod- 
ucts, the  animal  organismus  with  its  faculties  and  functions  ;  but 
yet  endowed  with  the  power  of  potentiating,  ennobling,  and  pre* 
scribing  to,  the  substance ;  and  hence,  therefore,  a  vo/uog  voponeldqg, 
lex  legisuada  :  4.  By  a  transition,  ordinary  even  in  allegory,  and 
appropriate  to  mythic  symbol,  but  especially  significant  in  the 
present  case — the  transition,  I  mean,  from  the  giver  to  the  gift — 
the  giver,  in  very  truth,  being  the  gift,  '  whence  the  soul  receives 
reason;  and  reason  is  her  being,'  says  our  Milton.  Reason  is 
from  God,  and  God  is  reason,  mens  ijmssima. 

5.  Prometheus  represents,  Nous  iv  dvOgdnaa — vovg  uywvioi^g. 
Thus  contemplated,  the  Nons  is  of  necessity,  powerless ;  for  all 
power,  that  is,  productivity,  or  productive  energy,  is  in  Law,  that 
is,  roiAog  <jilloTQiQi>o}iog  :*  still,  however,  the  Idea  in  the  Law,  the 
numerus  numerans  become  votuog,  is  the  principle  of  the  Law ; 
and  if  with  Law  dwells  power,  so  with  the  knowledge  or  the 
Idea  scientialis  of  the  Law,  dwells  prophecy  and  foresight.  A 
perfect  astronomical  time-piece  in  relation  to  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  or  the  magnet  in  the  mariner's  compass  in  rela- 
tion to  the  magnetism  of  the  earth,  is  a  sufficient  illustration. 

6.  Both  v6tuog  and  Idea  (or  Nous)  are  the  verbum  ;  but,  as  in 
the  former,  it  is  verbum  fiat '  the  Word  of  the  Lord,' — in  the  latter 
it  must  be  the  verbum  fiet  or,  '  the  Word  of  the  Lord  in  the  mouth 
of  the  prophet.'  Pari  argumento,  as  the  knowledge  is  therefore 
not  power,  the  power  is  not  knowledge.  The  vojuog,  the  Zevt 
navzoxgixTwi),  seeks  to  learn,  and,  as  it  were,  to  wrest  the  secret, 
the  hateful  secret,  of  his  own  fate,  namely,  the  transitoriness  ad- 
herent to  all  antithesis ;  for  the  identity  or  the  absolute  is  alone 
eternal.  This  secret  Jove  would  extort  from  the  Nous,  or  Pro- 
metheus, which  is  the  sixth  representment  of  Prometheus. 

7.  Introduce  but  the  least  of  real  as  opposed  to  ideal,  the  least 
speck  of  positive  existence,  even  though  it  were  but  the  mote  in 
a  sunbeam,  into  the  sciential  contemplamen  or  theorem,  and  it 
ceases  to  be  science.  Ratio  desinit  esse  pura  ratio  et  fit  dis~ 
cursus,  stat  subter  et  fit  tinoderixbv : — non  superstat.  The  Nous 
is  bound  to  a  rock,  the  immovable  firmness  of  which  is  indisso- 

*  I  scarcely  need  say,  that  I  use  the  word  d?i?,oTpiovoluog  as  a  participle 
active,  as  exercising  law  on  another,  not  as  receiving  law  from  another, 
though  the  latter  is  the  classical  force  (I  suppose)  of  the  word 


PROMETHEUS   OF  ^ESCHYLUS.  363 

lubly  connected  with  its  barrenness,  its  non-productivity.  "Were 
it  productive  it  would  be  Nomos ;  but  it  is  Nous,  because  it  is 
not  Nomos. 

8.  Solitary  d^ara  iv  egy/ula.     Now  I  say  that  the  Nous,  not- 
withstanding its  diversity  from  the  Nomizomeni,  is  yet,  relatively 
to  their  supposed  original  essence,  nacn  toTq  vopi'Qophoig  -tavwyevrig, 
of  the  same  race  or  radix :  though  in  another  sense,  namely,  in 
relation  to  the  nav  delov — the  pantheistic  JElohim,  it  is  conceived 
anterior  to  the  schism,  and  to  the  conquest  and  enthronization  of 
Jove  who  succeeded.     Hence  the  Prometheus  of  the  great  trage- 
dian is  Oebg  avyyev^g:     The  kindred  deities  come  to  him,  some  to 
soothe,  to  condole ;  others  to  give  weak,  yet  friendly,  counsels  'of 
submission ;  others  to  tempt,  or  insult.     The  most  prominent  of 
the  latter,  and  the  most  odious  to  the  imprisoned  and  insulated 
Nous,  is  Hermes,  the  impersonation  of  interest  with  the  entran- 
cing and  serpentine  Caduceus,  and,  as  interest  or  motives  inter- 
vening between  the  reason  and  its  immediate  self-determinations, 
with  the  antipathies  to  the  vdpog  aixovo^og.     The  Hermes  imper- 
sonates the  eloquence  of  cupidity,  the  cajolement  of  power  reg- 
nant ;  and  in  a  larger  sense,  custom,  the  irrational  in  language, 
i  Q^fiaja  to.  QiiTogwcc,  the  fluent,  from  gsto — the  rhetorical  in  oppo- 
;  sition  to  loyoi,  to.  vorjxa.     But,  primarily,  the  Hermes  is  the  sym- 
*  bol  of  interest.     He  is  the  messenger,  the  inter-nuncio,  in  the  low 
\  but  expressive  phrase,  the  go-between,  to  beguile  or  insult.     And 
[for  the  other  visitors  of  Prometheus,  the  elementary  powers,  or 
spirits  of  the  elements,  Titanes  pacati,  Oeol  -vnov6{iioi,  vassal  po- 
tentates, and  their  solicitations,  the  noblest  interpretation  will  be 
|j  given,  if  I  repeat  the  lines  of  our  great  contemporary  poet : — 

Earth  fills  her  lap  with  pleasures  of  her  own  : 
Yearnings  she  hath  in  her  own  natural  kind, 
And  e'en  with  something  of  a  mother's  mind, 

And  no  unworthy  aim, 
The  homely  nurse  doth  all  she  can 
To  make  her  foster-child,  her  inmate,  Man 

Forget  the  glories  he  hath  known 

And  that  imperial  palace  whence  he  came : — 

Wordsworth. 


which  exquisite  language  is  prefigured  in  coarser  clay,  indeed, 

^nd  with  a  less  lofty  spirit,  but  yet  excellently  in  their  kind,  and 

ven  more  fortunately  for  the  illustration  and  ornament  of  the 


364  II>EA  OF  THE 

present  commentary,  in  the  fifth,  sixth,  and  seventh  stanzas  of 
Dr.  Henry  More's  poem  on  the  Pre-existence  of  the  Soul : — 

Thus  groping  after  our  own  centre's  near 
And  proper  substance,  we  grew  dark,  contract, 
Swallow'd  up  of  earthly  life !     Ne  what  we  were 
Of  old,  thro'  ignorance  can  we  detect. 
Like  noble  babe,  by  fate  or  friends'  neglect 
Left  to  the  care  of  sorry  salvage  wight, 
Grown  up  to  manly  years  can  not  conject 
His  own  true  parentage,  nor  read  aright 
What  father  him  begot,  what  womb  him  brought  to  light. 

So  we,  as  stranger  infants  elsewhere  born, 
Can  not  divine  from  what  spring  we  did  flow  ; 
Ne  dare  these  base  alliances  to  scorn, 
Nor  lift  ourselves  a  whit  from  hence  below  ; 
Ne  strive  our  parentage  again  to  know, 
Ne  dream  we  once  of  any  other  stock, 
Since  foster'd  upon  Rhea's*  knees  we  grow, 
In  Satyrs  arms  with  many  a  mow  and  mock 
Oft  danced  ;  and  hairy  Pan  our  cradle  oft  hath  rock'd  ! 

But  Pan  nor  Rhea  be  our  parentage ! 

We  been  the  offspring  of  the  all-seeing  Nous,  &c. 

To  express  the  supersensual  character  of  the  reason,  its  ab- 
straction from  sensation,  we  find  the  Prometheus  uTeonri, — while 
in  the  yearnings  accompanied  with  the  remorse  incident  to,  and 
only  possible  in  consequence  of  the  Nous  being,  the  rational,  self- 
conscious,  and  therefore  responsible  will,  he  is  yvnl  diuxvaiousvog. 

If  to  these  contemplations  we  add  the  control  and  despotism 
exercised  on  the  free  reason  by  Jupiter  in  his  symbolical  charac- 
ter, as  vouog  Tiohjixbg ; — by  custom  (Hermes)  ;  by  necessity,  (2/a 
xal  aouibg ; — by  the  mechanic  arts  and  powers,  ovyyevsTg  7(3  7\rou 
though  they  are,  and  which  are  symbolized  in  Hephaistos, — we 
shall  see  at  once  the  propriety  of  the  title,  Prometheus,  dealing. 

9.  Nature,  or  Zeus  as  the  vouog  Iv  voiit'c.otusvoig,  knows  herself 
only,  can  only  come  to  a  knowledge  of  herself,  in  man  !     And 

*  Rhea  (from  pea),  fluo),  that  is,  the  earth  as  the  transitory,  the  ever- 
flowing  nature,  the  flux  and  sum  of  phenomena,  or  objects  of  the  outward 
sense,  in  contra-distinction  from  the  earth  as  Vesta,  as  the  firmamental  law 
that  sustains  and  disposes  the  apparent  world  !  The  Satyrs  represent  the 
sports  and  appetences  of  the  sensuous  nature  (6p6vn/ia  aapKog) — Pan,  or  the 
total  life  of  the  earth,  the  presence  of  all  in  each,  the  universal  organism 
of  bodies  and  bodily  energy. 


PEOMETHEUS   OF  ^ESCHYLUS  365 

even  in  man,  only  as  man  is  supernatural,  above  nature,  noetic. 
But  this  knowledge  man  refuses  to  communicate  :  that  is,  the 
human  understanding  alone  is  at  once  self-conscious  and  conscious 
of  nature.  And  this  high  prerogative  it  owes  exclusively  to  its 
being  an  assessor  of  the  reason.  Yet  even  the  human  under- 
standing in  its  height  of  place  seeks  vainly  to  appropriate  the 
ideas  of  the  pure  reason,  which  it  can  only  represent  by  idola. 
Here,  then,  the  Nous  stands  as  Prometheus,  (xviinaloc,  renucns 
— in  hostile  opposition  to  Jupiter  Inquisitor. 

10.  Yet,  finally,  against  the  obstacles  and  even  under  the  fos 
tering  influences  of  the  Nomos,  tov  vo[i[[/ovt  a  son  of  Jove  him- 
self, but  a  descendant  from  Io,  the  mundane  religion,  as  contra 
distinguished  from  the  sacerdotal  cultus,  or  religion  of  the  state, 
an  Alcides  Liberator  will  arise,  and  the  Nous  or  divine  principh 
in  man,  will  be  Prometheus  £lBv0eQ(b[*evog. 

Did  my  limits  or  time  permit  me  to  trace  the  persecutions, 
wanderings,  and  migrations  of  the  Io,  the  mundane  religion, 
through  the  whole  map  marked  out  by  the  tragic  poet,  the  coin- 
cidences would  bring  the  truth,  the  unarbitrariness,  of  the  pre- 
ceding exposition  as  near  to  demonstration  as  can  rationally  be 
required  on  a  question  of  history,  that  must,  for  the  greater  part, 
be  answered  by  combination  of  scattered  facts.  But  this  part 
of  my  subject,  together  with  a  particular  exemplification  of  the 
light  which  my  theory  throws  both,  on  the  sense  and  the  beauty 
of  numerous  passages  of  this  stupendous  poem  I  must  reserve  for 
a  future  communication. 

NOTES* 

v.  15.  (p&gayyi,  : — '  in  a  coomb,  or  combe.' 

v.  17. 

k^copiu&iv  yup  narpog  'kbyovg  j3apv. 

evcoQid&iv,  as  the  editor  confesses,  is  a  word  introduced  into 

|  the  text  against  the  authority  of  all  editions  and  manuscripts.     I 

should  prefer  e£a}gi<x£eiv,  notwithstanding  its  being  a  anas  Xeyo- 

(asvop.     The  si) — seems  to  my  tact  too  free  and  easy  a  word  ;  — 

and  yet  our  '  to  trifle  with'  appears  the  exact  meaning. 

*  Written  in  Bp.  Bloi  ^field's  edition,  and  communicated  by  Mr.  Gary.— 
Ed. 


36G  MYSTERIES   IN  POSITION  OF  THE 


SUMMARY  OF  AN  ESSAY 

ON    THE    FUNDAMENTAL    POSITION    OF    THE    MYSTERIES     IN     RELATION     TO    GREEg 

TRAGEDY. 

The  Position,  to  the  establishment  of  which  Mr.  Coleridge  re- 
gards his  essay  as  the  Prolegomena,  is  :  that  the  Greek  Tragedy 
stood  in  the  same  relation  to  the  Mysteries,  as  the  Epic  Song, 
and  the  Fine  Arts  to  the  Temple  Worship,  or  the  Religion  of  the 
State  ;  that  the  proper  function  of  the  Tragic  Poet  was  under 
the  disguise  of  popular  superstitions,  and  using  the  popular  My- 
thology as  his  stuff  and  drapery  to  communicate  so  much  and  no 
more  of  the  doctrines  preserved  in  the  Mysteries  as  should  coun- 
teract the  demoralizing  influence  of  the  state  religion,  without 
disturbing  the  public  tranquillity,  or  weakening  the  reverence  for 
the  laws,  or  bringing  into  contempt  the  ancestral  and  local  usages 
and  traditions  on  which  the  patriotism  of  the  citizens  mainly 
rested,  or  that  nationality  in  its  intensest  form  which  was  little 
less  than  essential  in  the  constitution  of  a  Greek  republic.  To 
establish  this  position  it  was  necessary  to  explain  the  nature  of 
these  secret  doctrines,  or  at  least  the  fundamental  principles  of 
the  faith  and  philosophy  of  Elensis  and  Samothrace.  The  Samo- 
thracian  Mysteries  Mr.  Coleridge  supposes  to  have  been  of  Phoe- 
nician origin,  and  both  these  and  the  Elensinian  to  have  retained 
the  religious  belief  of  the  more  ancient  inhabitants  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus, prior  to  their  union  with  the  Hellenes  and  the  Egyp- 
tian colonies  :  that  it  comprised  sundry  relics  and  fragments  of 
the  Patriarchal  Faith,  the  traditions  historical  and  prophetic  of 
the  Noetic  Family,  though  corrupted  and  depraved  by  their  com- 
binations with  the  system  of  Pantheism,  or  the  Worship  of  the 
Universe  as  God  (Jupiter  est  qiiodcunque  vides),  which  Mr. 
Coleridge  contends  to  have  been  the  first  great  Apostasy  of  the 
Ancient  World.  But  a  religion  founded  on  Pantheism,  is  of  ne- 
cessity a  religion  founded  on  philosophy,  i.  e.  an  attempt  to  deter- 
mine the  origin  of  nature  by  the  unaided  strength  of  the  human 
Intellect,  however  unsound  and  false  that  philosophy  may  have 
been.  And  of  this  the  sacred  books  of  the  Indian  Priests  afford 
at  once  proof  and  instance.  Again  :  the  earlier  the  date  of  any 
philosophic  scheme,  the  more  subjective  will  it  be  found — in 
other  words  tl  e  earliest  reasoners  sought  in  their  own  minds  the 


RELATION  TO   GREEK  TRAGEDY.  367 

form,  measure,  and  substance  of  all  other  power.  Abstracting 
from  whatever  was  individual  and  accidental,  from  whatever 
distinguished  one  human  mind  from  another,  they  fixed  their  at- 
tention exclusively  on  the  characters  which  belong  to  all  rational 
beings,  and  which  therefore  they  contemplated  as  mind  itself, 
mind  in  its  essence.  And  however  averse  a  scholar  of  the  pres- 
ent day  may  be  to  these  first  fruits  of  speculative  thought,  as 
metaphysics,  a  knowledge  of  their  contents  and  distinctive  tenets 
is  indispensable  as  history.  At  all  events  without  this  knowl- 
edge he  will  in  vain  attempt  to  understand  the  spirit  and  genius 
of  the  arts,  institutions,  and  governing  minds  of  ancient  Greece. 
The  difficulty  of  comprehending  any  scheme  of  opinion  is  propor- 
tionate to  its  greater  or  lesser  unlikeness  to  the  principles  and 
modes  of  reasoning  in  which  our  own  minds  have  been  formed. 
Where  the  difference  is  so  great  as  almost  to  amount  to  contra- 
riety, no  clearness  in  the  exhibition  of  the  scheme  will  remove 
the  sense,  or  rather,  perhaps,  the  sensation,  of  strangeness  from 
the  hearer's  mind.  Even  beyond  its  utmost  demerits  it  will  ap- 
pear obscure,  unreal,  visionary.  This  difficulty  the  author  anti- 
cipates as  an  obstacle  to  the  ready  comprehension  of  the  first 
principles  of  the  eldest  philosophy,  and  the  esoteric  doctrines  of 
the  Mysteries  ;  but  to  the  necessity  of  overcoming  this  the  only 
obstacle,  the  thoughtful  inquirer  must  resign  himself,  as  the  con- 
dition under  which  alone  he  may  expect  to  solve  a  series  of  prob- 
lems the  most  interesting  of  all  that  the  records  of  ancient  his 
tory  propose  or  suggest. 

The  fundamental  position  of  the  Mysteries,  Mr.  Coleridge  con- 
tends, consists  in  affirming  that  the  productive  powers  or  laws 
of  nature  are  essentially  the  same  with  the  active  powers  of  the 
mind — in  other  words,  that  mind,  or  Nous,  under  which  term 
they  combine  the  universal  attributes  of  reason  and  will,  is  a 
principle  of  forms  and  patterns,  endued  with  a  tendency  to  mani- 
fest itself  as  such ;  and  that  this  mind  or  eternal  essence  exists 
K  two  modes  of  being.  Namely,  either  the  form  and  the  pro- 
ductive power,  which  gives  it  outward  and  phsenomenal  reality 
are  United  in  equal  and  adequate  proportions,  in  which  case  it  is 
what  the  eldest  philosophers,  and  the  moderns  in  imitation  of 
them,  call  a  laiv  of  nature  ;  or  the  form  remaining  the  same,  but 
with  the  productive  power  in  unequal  or  inadequate  proportions, 
whether  the  diminution  be  effected  by  the  mind's  own  act  01 


368  FRAGMENT   OF   AN   ESSAY   ON   TASTE. 

original  determination  not  to  put  forth  this  inherent  power,  oi 
whether  the  power  have  been  repressed,  and  as  it  were  driven 
inward  by  the  violence  of  a  superior  force  from  without, — and  in 
this  case  it  was  called  by  the  most  Ancient  School  "  Intelligible 
Number,"  by  a  later  School  "Idea,"  or  Mind — koct'  i^oy^v.  To 
this  position  a  second  was  added,  namely,  that  the  form  could 
not  put  forth  its  productive  or  self-realizing  power  without  ceas- 
ing at  the  same  moment  to  exist  for  itself, — i.  e.  to  exist,  and 
know  itself  as  existing.  The  formative  power  wras  as  it  were 
alienated  from  itself  and  absorbed  in  the  product.  It  existed  as 
an  instinctive,  essentially  intelligential,  but  not  self-knowing, 
poAver.  It  was  law,  Jupiter,  or  (when  contemplated  plurally) 
the  Dii  Majores.  On  the  other  hand,  to  possess  its  own  being 
consciously,  the  form  must  remain  single  and  only  inwardly  pro- 
ductive. To  exist  for  itself,  it  must  continue  to  exist  by  itself. 
It  must  be  an  idea ;  but  an  idea  in  the  primary  sense  of  the 
term,  the  sense  attached  to  it  by  the  oldest  Italian  School  and  by 
Plato, — not  as  a  synonyme  of,  but  in  contra-distinction  from, 
image,  conception  or  notion :  as  a  true  entity  of  all  entities  the 
most  actual,  of  all  essences  the  most  essential. 

Now  on  this  Antithesis  of  idea  and  law,  that  is  of  mind  as  an 
unproductive  but  self-knowing  power,  and  of  mind  as  a  productive 
but  unconscious  power,  the  whole  religion  of  pantheism  as  disclosed 
in  the  Mysteries  turns,  as  on  its  axis,  bi-polar. 


FRAGMENT  OF  AN  ESSAY  ON  TASTE.     1810. 

The  same  arguments  that  decide  the  question,  whether  taste 
has  any  fixed  principles,  may  probably  lead  to  a  determination 
of  what  those  principles  are.  First,  then,  what  is  taste  in  its 
metaphorical  sense,  or,  which  will  be  the  easiest  mode  of  arriving 
at  the  same  solution,  what  is  there  in  the  primary  sense  of  the 
word,  which  may  give  to  its  metaphorical  meaning  an  import 
different  from  that  of  sight  or  hearing,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
touch  or  smell  on  the  other  ?  And  this  question  seems  the  more 
natural,  because  in  correct  language  we  confine  beauty,  the  mam 
subject  of  taste,  to  objects  of  sight  and  combinations  of  sounds, 
and  never,  except  sportively  or  by  abuse  of  words,  speak  of  a 
beautiful  flavor,  or  a  beautiful  scent. 


FKAGMENT   OF  AN  ESSAY  ON  TASTE.  869 

Now  the  analysis  of  our  senses  in  the  commonest  books  of 
anthropology  has  drawn  our  attention  to  the  distinction  between 
the  perfectly  organic,  and  the  mixed  senses ; — the  first  presenting 
objects,  as  distinct  from  the  perception; — the  last  as  blending  the 
perception  with  the  sense  of  the  object.  Our  eyes  and  ears — (I 
am  not  now  considering  what  is  or  is  not  the  case  really,  but 
only  that  of  which  we  are  regularly  conscious  as  appearances), 
our  eyes  most  often  appear  to  us  perfect  organs  of  the  sentient 
principle,  and  wholly  in  action,  and  our  hearing  so  much  more  so 
than  the  three  other  senses,  and  in  all  the  ordinary  exertions  of 
that  sense,  perhaps,  equally  so  with  the  sight,  that  all  languages 
place  them  in  one  class,  and  express  their  different  modifications 
by  nearly  the  same  metaphors.  The  three  remaining  senses 
appear  in  part  passive,  and  combine  with  the  perception  of  the 
outward  object  a  distinct  sense  of  our  own  life.  Taste,  therefore, 
as  opposed  to  vision  and  sound,  will  teach  us  to  expect  in  its 
metaphorical  use  a  certain  reference  of  any  given  object  to  our 
own  being,  and  not  merely  a  distinct  notion  of  the  object  in  itself, 
or  in  its  independent  properties.  From  the  sense  of  touch,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  distinguishable  by  adding  to  this  reference 
to  our  vital  being  some  degree  of  enjoyment,  or  the  contrary, — 
some  perceptible  impulse  from  pleasure  or  pain  to  complacency 
or  dislike.  The  sense  of  smell,  indeed,  might  perhaps  have  fur- 
nished a  metaphor  of  the  same  import  with  that  of  taste ;  but 
the  latter  was  naturally  chosen  by  the  majority  of  civilized 
nations  on  account  of  the  greater  frequency,  importance,  and  dig- 
nity of  its  employment  or  exertion  in  human  nature. 

By  taste,  therefore,  as  applied  to  the  fine  arts,  we  must  be 
supposed  to  mean  an  intellectual  perception  of  any  object  blended 
with  a  distinct  reference  to  our  own  sensibility  of  pain  or  pleasure, 
or,  vice  versa,  a  sense  of  enjoyment  or  dislike  cc-instantaneously 
combined  with,  and  appearing  to  proceed  from,  some  intellectual 
perception  of  the  object; — intellectual  perception,  I  say;  for 
otherwise  it  would  be  a  definition  of  taste  in  its  primary  rather 
than  in  its  metaphorical  sense.  Briefly,  taste  is  a  metaphor 
taken  from  one  of  our  mixed  senses,  and  applied  to  objects  of  the 
more  purely  organic  senses,  and  of  our  moral  sense,  when  we 
would  imply  the  co-existence  of  immediate  personal  dislike  or 
complacency.  In  this  definition  of  taste,  therefore,  is  involved 
the  definition  of  fine  arts,  namely,  as  being  such  the  chief  and 

Q* 


870  FRAGMENT  OF  AN   ESSAY   ON  BEAUTY. 

discriminative  purpose  of  which  it  is  to  gratify  the  taste, — that 
is,  not  merely  to  connect,  but  to  combine  and  unite,  a  sense  of 
immediate  pleasure  in  ourselves,  with  the  perception  of  external 
arrangement. 

The  great  question,  therefore,  whether  taste  in  any  one  of  the 
fine  arts  has  any  fixed  principle  or  ideal,  will  find  its  solution  in 
the  ascertainment  of  two  facts  : — first,  whether  in  every  determi- 
nation of  the  taste  concerning  any  work  of  the  fine  arts,  the  indi- 
vidual does  not,  with  or  even  against  the  approbation  of  his 
general  judgment,  involuntarily  claim  that  all  other  minds  ought 
to  think  and  feel  the  same;  whether  the  common  expressions,  '1 
dare  say  I  may  be  wrong,  but  that  is  my  particular  taste ;' — are 
uttered  as  an  offering  of  courtesy,  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  undoubted 
fact  of  our  individual  fallibility,  or  are  spoken  with  perfect  sin- 
cerity, not  only  of  the  reason  but  of  the  whole  feeling,  with  the 
same  entireness  of  mind  and  heart,  with  which  we  concede  a 
right  to  every  person  to  differ  from  another  in  his  preference  of 
bodily  tastes  and  flavors.  If  we  should  find  ourselves  compelled 
to  deny  this,  and  to  admit  that,  notwithstanding  the  consciousness 
of  our  liability  to  error,  and  in  spite  of  all  those  many  individual 
experiences  which  may  have  strengthened  the  consciousness,  each 
man  does  at  the  moment  so  far  legislate  for  all  men,  as  to  believe 
of  necessity  that  he  is  either  right  or  wrong,  and  that  if  it  be 
right  for  him,  it  is  universally  right, — we  must  then  proceed  to 
ascertain : — secondly,  whether  the  source  of  these  phenomena  is 
at  all  to  be  found  in  those  parts  of  our  nature,  in  which  each 
intellect  is  representative  of  all, — and  whether  wholly,  or  par- 
tially. No  person  of  common  reflection  demands  even  in  feeling, 
that  what  tastes  pleasant  to  him  ought  to  produce  the  same 
effect  on  all  living  beings ;  but  every  man  does  and  must  expect 
and  demand  the  universal  acquiescence  of  all  intelligent  beings 
in  every  conviction  of  his  understanding. 

#  #  *  #  #  #  % 


FRAGMENT  OF  AN  ESSAY  ON  BEAUTY.     1818. 

The  only  necessary,  but  this  the  absolutely  necessary,  pre- 
requisite to  a  full  insight  into  the  grounds  of  the  beauty  in  the 
objects  of  sight  is — the  directing  of  the  attention  to  the  action  of 


FRAGMENT  OF  AN  ESSAY    ON    BEAUTY.  871 

►hose  thoughts  in  our  own  mind  which  are  not  consciously  dis- 
tinguished. Every  man  may  understand  this,  if  he  will  but 
recall  the  state  of  his  feelings  in  endeavoring  to  recollect  a  name, 
which  he  is  quite  sure  that  he  remembers,  though  he  can  not 
force  it  back  into  consciousness.  This  region  of  unconscious 
thoughts,  oftentimes  the  more  working  the  more  indistinct  they 
are,  may,  in  reference  to  this  subject,  be  conceived  as  forming  an 
ascending  scale  from  the  most  universal  associations  of  motion 
with  the  functions  and  passions  of  life, — as  when,  on  passing  out 
of  a  crowded  city  into  the  fields  on  a  day  in  June,  we  describe 
the  grass  and  king-cups  as  nodding  their  heads  and  dancing  in 
the  breeze, — up  to  the  half-perceived,  yet  not  fixable,  resemblance 
of  a  form  to  some  particular  object  of  a  diverse  class,  which 
resemblance  we  need  only  increase  but  a  little,  to  destroy,  or  at 
least  injure,  its  beauty-enhancing  effect,  and  to  make  it  a  fantastic 
intrusion  of  the  accidental  and  the  arbitrary,  and  consequently  a 
disturbance  of  the  beautiful.  This  might  be  abundantly  exempli- 
fied and  illustrated  from  the  paintings  of  Salvator  Rosa. 

I  am  now  using  the  term  beauty  in  its  most  comprehensive 
sense,  as  including  expression  and  artistic  interest, — that  is,  I 
consider  not  only  the  living  balance,  but  likewise  all  the  accom- 
paniments that  even  by  disturbing  are  necessary  to  the  renewal 
and  continuance  of  the  balance.  And  in  this  sense  I  proceed  to 
show,  that  the  beautiful  in  the  object  may  be  referred  to  two  ele- 
ments,— lines  and  colors  :  the  first  belonging  to  the  shapely 
(forma,  formalis,  formosus),  and  in  this,  to  the  law,  and  the 
reason ;  and  the  second,  to  the  lively,  the  free,  the  spontaneous, 
and  the  self-justifying.  As  to  lines,  the  rectilineal  are  in  them- 
selves the  lifeless,  the  determined  ab  extra,  but  still  in  immediate 
union  with  the  cycloidal,  which  are  expressive  of  function.  The 
curve  line  is  a  modification  of  the  force  from  without  by  the  force 
from  within,  or  the  spontaneous.  These  are  not  arbitrary  sym- 
bols, but  the  language  of  nature,  universal  and  intuitive,  by  vir- 
tue of  the  law  by  which  man  is  impelled  to  explain  visible  mo- 
tions by  imaginary  causative  powers  analogous  to  his  oavu  acts, 
as  the  Dryads,  Hamadryads,  Naiads,  &c. 

The  better  way  of  applying  these  principles  will  be  by  a  brief 
and  rapid  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  fine  arts, — in  which  it  will 
be  found,  that  the  beautiful  in  nature  has  been  appropriated  to  the 
works  of  man,  just  in  proportion  as  the  state  of  the  mind  in  the 


872  FRAGMENT   OF  AN   ESSAY   ON   BEAUTY. 

artists  themselves  approached  to  the  subjective  beauty.  Deter* 
mine  what  predominance  in  the  minds  of  the  men  is  preventive 
of  the  living  balance  of  excited  faculties,  and  you  will  discover 
the  exact  counterpart  in  the  outward  products.  Egypt  is  an 
illustration  of  this.  Shapeliness  is  intellect  without  freedom  ;  but 
colors  are  significant.  The  introduction  of  the  arch  is  not  less  an 
;poch  in  the  fine  than  in  the  useful  arts. 

Order  is  beautiful  arrangement  without  any  purpose  ad  extra; 
— therefore  there  is  a  beauty  of  order,  or  order  may  be  contem- 
plated exclusively  as  beauty. 

The  form  given  in  every  empirical  intuition, — the  stuff,  that 
is,  the  quality  of  the  stuff,  determines  the  agreeable  :  but  when 
a  thing  excites  us  to  receive  it  in  such  and  such  a  mould,  so  that 
its  exact  correspondence  to  that  mould  is  what  occupies  the  mind, 
— this  is  taste  or  the  sense  of  beauty.  Whether  dishes  full  of 
painted  wood  or  exquisite  viands  were  laid  out  on  a  table  in  the 
same  arrangement,  would  be  indifferent  to  the  taste,  as  in  ladies' 
patterns  ;  but  surely  the  one  is  far  more  agreeable  than  the  other. 
Hence  observe  the  disinterestedness  of  all  taste  ;  and  hence  also 
a  sensual  perfection  with  intellect  is  occasionally  possible  without 
moral  feeling.  So  it  may  be  in  music  and  painting,  but  not  in 
poetry.  How  far  it  is  a  real  preference  of  the  refined  to  the 
gross  pleasures,  is  another  question,  upon  the  supposition  that 
pleasure,  in  some  form  or  other,  is  that  alone  which  determines 
men  to  the  objects  of  the  former  ; — whether  experience  does  not 
show  that  if  the  latter  were  equally  in  our  power,  occasioned  no 
more  trouble  to  enjoy,  and  caused  no  more  exhaustion  of  the 
power  of  enjoying  them  by  the  enjoyment  itself,  we  should 
in  real  practice  prefer  the  grosser  pleasure.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
any  excellence  in  the  quality  of  the  refined  pleasures  themselves, 
but  the  advantages  and  facilities  in  the  means  of  enjoying  them 
that  give  them  the  pre-eminence. 

This  is,  of  course,  on  the  supposition  of  the  absence  of  all  moral 
feeling.  Suppose  its  presence,  and  then  there  will  accrue  an  ex- 
cellence even  to  the  quality  of  the  pleasures  themselves  ;  not  only, 
however,  of  the  refined,  but  also  of  the  grosser  kinds, — inasmuch 
as  a  larger  sweep  of  thoughts  will  be  associated  with  each  en- 
joyment, and  with  each  thought  will  be  associated  a  number  of 
sensations  ;  and  so,  consequently,  each  pleasure  will  become  more 
the  pleasure  of  the  whole  being.     This  is  one  of  the  earthly  re- 


JNOTES   ON   CHAPMAN'S   HOMER.  373 

wards  of  our  being  what  we  ought  to  be,  but  which  would  be 
annihilated  if  we  attempted  to  be  it  for  the  sake  of  this  increased 
enjoyment.  Indeed  it  is  a  contradiction  to  suppose  it.  Yet  this 
is  the  common  argumentum  in  circido,  in  which  the  eudsemo- 
nists  Uee  and  pursue. 

*  *  #  # 

NOTES  ON  CHAPMAN'S  HOMER. 

Extract  of  a  Letter  sent  ivith  the  Volume*     1807. 

Chapman  I  have  sent  in  order  that  you  might  read  the  Odyssey  ; 
the  Iliad  is  fine,  but  less  equal  in  the  translation,  as  well  as  less 
interesting  in  itself.  What  is  stupidly  said  of  Shakspeare,  is 
really  true  and  appropriate  of  Chapman  ;  mighty  faults  counter- 
poised by  mighty  beauties.  Excepting  his  quaint  epithets  which 
he  affects  to  render  literally  from  the  Greek,  a  language  above  all 
others  blest  in  the  "  happy  marriage  of  sweet  words,"  and  which 
in  our  language  are  mere  printer's  compound  epithets — such  as 
quaffed  divine  joy -in-the-hcar t-of-man-inj using  wine  (the  under- 
marked  is  to  be  one  word,  because  one  sweet  mellifluous  word  ex- 
presses it  in  Homer)  ; — excepting  this,  it  has  no  look,  no  air,  of  a 
translation.  It  is  as  truly  an  original  poem  as  the  Faery 
Q,ueene  ; — it  will  give  you  small  idea  of  Homer,  though  a  far 
truer  one  than  Pope's  epigrams,  or  Cowper's  cumbersome  most 
anti-Homeric  Miltonism.  For  Chapman  writes  and  feels  as  a 
poet, — as  Homer  might  have  written  had  he  lived  in  England  in 
the  reign  of  Q,ueen  Elizabeth.  In  short,  it  is  an  exquisite  poem, 
in  spite  of  its  frequent  and  perverse  quaintnesses  and  harshnesses, 
which  are,  however,  amply  repaid  by  almost  unexampled  sweet- 
ness and  beauty  of  language,  all  over  spirit  and  feeling.  In  the 
main  it  is  an  English  heroic  poem,  the  tale  of  which  is  borrowed 
from  the  Greek.  The  dedication  to  the  Iliad  is  a  noble  copy  of 
verses,  especially^hose  sublime  lines  beginning, — 

0 !  'tis  wondrous  much 
(Through  nothing  prisde)  that  the  right  vertuous  touch 
Of  a  well  written  soule,  to  vertue  moves. 
Nor  haue  we  soules  to  purpose,  if  their  loves 
Of  fittiDg  objects  be  not  so  innam'd. 
How  much  then,  were  this  kingdome's  maine  soul  maim'd, 

*  Communicated  through  Mr.  Wordsworth. — Ed. 


374.  NOTES    ON    CHAPMAN'S   HOMER. 

To  want  this  great  inflamer  of  all  powers 

That  move  in  humane  soules  !     All  realmes  but  yours, 

Are  honor'd  with  him  ;  and  hold  blest  that  state 

That  have  his  workes  to  reade  and  contemplate. 

In  which,  humanitie  to  her  height  is  raisde ; 

Which  all  the  world  (yet,  none  enough)  hath  praisde. 

Seas,  earth,  and  heaven,  he  did  in  verse  comprize ; 

Out  sung  the  Muses,  and  did  equalise 

Their  king  Apollo ;  being  so  farre  from  cause 

Of  princes  light  thoughts,  that  their  gravest  lawes 

May  finde  stuffe  to  be  fashiond  by  his  lines. 

Through  all  the  pompe  of  kingdomes  still  he  shines 

And  graceth  all  his  gracers.     Then  let  lie 

Your  lutes,  and  viols,  and  more  loftily 

Make  the  heroiques  of  your  Homer  sung, 

To  drums  and  trumpets  set  his  Angels  tongue : 

And  with  the  princely  sports  of  haukes  you  use, 

Behold  the  kingly  flight  of  his  high  Muse  : 

And  see  how  like  the  Phoenix  she  renues 

Her  age,  and  starrie  feathers  in  your  sunne  ; 

Thousands  of  yeares  attending ;  everie  one 

Blowing  the  holy  fire,  and  throwing  in 

Their  seasons,  kingdomes,  nations  that  have  bi'.i 

Subverted  in  them ;  lawes,  religions,  all 

Offerd  to  change,  and  greedie  funerall ; 

Yet  still  your  Homer  lasting,  living,  raigning. — 

and  likewise  the  1st,  the  11th,  and  last  but  one,  of  the  prefatory 
sonnets  to  the  Odyssey.  Could  I  have  foreseen  any  other  speedy 
opportunity,  I  should  have  begged  your  acceptance  of  the  volume 
in  a  somewhat  handsomer  coat ;  but  as  it  is,  it  will  better  repre- 
sent the  sender, — to  quote  from  myself — 

A  man  disherited,  in  form  and  face, 

By  nature  and  mishap,  of  outward  grace. 

Dedication  Chapman  in  his  moral  heroic  verse,  as  in  this  dedi- 
io  Prince  cation  and  the  prefatory  sonnets  to  his  Odyssey,  stands 
above  Ben  Jonson  ;  there  is  more  dignity,  more  lustre, 
and  equal  strength  ;  but  not  midway  quite  between 
him  and  the  sonnets  of  Milton.  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  give  .him  the  higher  praise,  in  that  he 
reminds  me  of  Ben  Jonson  with  a  sense  of  his  superior 
excellence,  or  that  he  brings  Milton  to  memory  not- 
withstanding his  inferiority.  His  moral  poems  are 
not  quite  out  of  books  like  Jonson's,  nor  yet  do  the 


Hemy. 


NOTES  ON  CHAPMAN'S  HOMEE.  375 

soiitiments  so  wholly  grow  up  out  of  his  own  natural 
habit  and  grandeur  of  thought,  as  in  Milton.  The 
sentiments  have  heen  attracted  to  him  by  a  natural  af- 
finity of  his  intellect,  and  so  combined ; — but  Jonson  has 
taken  them  by  individual  and  successive  acts  of  choice, 

All  this  and  the  preceding  is  well  felt  and  vigor-   Epistle  Dedk 
ously,  though  harshly,   expressed,  respecting  sublime   catorietotha 

•  Odvssov 

poetry  m  genere ;  but  in  reading  Homer  I  look  about 
me,  and  ask  how  does  all  this  apply  here  ?  For  surely 
never  was  there  plainer  writing ;  there  are  a  thou- 
sand charms  of  sun  and  moonbeam,  ripple,  and  wave, 
and  stormy  billow,  but  all  on  the  surface.  Had  Chap- 
man read  Proclus  and  Porphyry  ? — and  did  he  really 
believe  them, — or  even  that  they  believed  themselves  ? 
They  felt  the  immense  power  of  a  Bible,  a  Shaster,  a 
Koran.  There  was  none  in  Gfreece  or  Rome,  and  they 
tried  therefore  by  subtle  allegorical  accommodations 
to  conjure  the  poem  of  Homer  into  the  fll&Uov  deona- 
qbdoiov  of  Greek  faith. 

Chapman's  identification  of  his  fate  with  Homer's,   Epistle  Dedi- 
and  his  complete  forgetfulness  of  the  distinction  be-   catorie  t0  th* 
tween   Christianity  and  idolatry,  under  the  general   oraachia°my" 
feeling  of  some   religion,   is  very  interesting.      It  is 
amusing  to  observe,  how  familiar  Chapman's  fancy  has 
become  with  Homer,  his  life  and  its  circumstances, 
though  the  very  existence  of  any  such  individual,  at 
least  with  regard  to  the  Iliad  and  the  Hymns,  is  more 
than  problematic.     KB.  The  rude  engraving  in  the 
page  was  designed  by  no  vulgar  hand.     It  is  full  of 
spirit  and  passion. 

I  am  so  dull,  that  neither  in  the  original  nor  in  any  End  of  the 
translation  could  I  ever  find  any  wit  or  wise  purpose   Batl'achomy« 

K    .i  •  mi  i     i     i    '  omachia. 

| in  this  poem.  The  whole  humor  seems  to  he  in  the 
[names.  The  frogs  and  mice  are  not  frogs  or  mice,  but 
men,  and  yet  they  do  nothing  that  conveys  any  satire. 
iln  the  Greek  there  ia  much  beauty  of  language,  but 
the  joke  is  very  flat.  This  is  always  the  case  in  rude 
ages  ; — their  serious  vein  is  inimitable, — their  comic 
fow,  and  low  indeed.  The  psychological  cause  is 
easily  stated,  and  copiously  exemplifiable. 


87G  NOTES   ON  BARCLAY'S  ARGENIS. 


NOTE  IN  CASAUBON'S  PERSIUS.     1807. 

There  are  six  hundred  and  sixteen  pages  in  this  volume,  of 
which  twenty-two  are  text ;  and  five  hundred  and  ninety-four 
commentary  and  introductory  matter.  Yet  when  I  recollect,  that 
I  have  the  whole  works  of  Cicero,  Livy,  and  duinctilian,  with 
many  others,— the  whole  works  of  each  in  a  single  volume, 
either  thick  quarto  with  thin  paper  and  small  yet  distinct  print, 
or  thick  octavo  or  duodecimo  of  the  same  character,  and  that 
they  cost  me  in  the  proportion  of  a  shilling  to  a  guinea  for  the 
same  quantity  of  worse  matter  in  modern  books,  or  editions, — 1 
a  poor  man,  yet  one  whom  {ISUuv  m^osus  tx  naidaglov  deivbg 
Ixoi'xrrioe  noQog,  feel  the  liveliest  gratitude  for  the  age  which  pro- 
duced such  editions,  and  for  the  education,  which  by  enabling  me 
to  understand  and  taste  the  Greek  and  Latin  writers,  has  thus 
put  it  in  my  power  to  collect  on  my  own  shelves,  for  my  actual 
use,  almost  all  the  best  books  in  spite  of  my  small  income. 
Somewhat  too  I  am  indebted  to  the  ostentation  of  expense  among 
the  rich,  which  has  occasioned  these  cheap  editions  to  become  so 
disproportionately  cheap. 


NOTES  ON  BARCLAY'S  ARGENIS.     1803* 

Heaven  forbid  that  this  work  should  not  exist  in  its  present 
form  and  language  !  Yet  I  can  not  avoid  the  wish  that  it  had, 
during  the  reign  of  James  I.,  been  moulded  into  an  heroic  poem 
in  English  octavo  stanza,  or  epic  blank  verse  ;— which,  however, 
at  that  time  had  not  been  invented,  and  which,  alas  !  still  re- 
mains the  sole  property  of  the  inventor,  as  if  the  Muses  had 
given  him  an  unevadible  patent  for  it.  Of  dramatic  blank  verse 
we  have  many  and  various  specimens  ;— for  example,  Shak- 
*peare's  as  compared  with  Massinger's,  both  excellent  in  then 
kind  :— of  lyric,  and  of  what  may  be  called  Orphic,  or  philosophic, 
blank  verse,  perfect  models  maybe  found  in  Wordsworth  :— of  col 
ioquial  blank  verse  there  are  excellent,  though  not  perfect,  ex 


*  Communicated  by  the  Rer  Derwent  Colericge. 


NOTES   ON  BARCLAY'S  ARGENIS.  377 

amples  m  Cowper  ; — but  of  epic  blank  verse,  since  Milton,  there 
is  not  one. 

It  absolutely  distresses  me  when  I  reflect  that  this  work,  ad- 
mired as  it  has  been  by  great  men  of  all  ages,  and  lately,  I  hear, 
by  the  poet  Cowper,  should  be  only  not  unknown  to  general 
readers.  It  has  been  translated  into  English  two  or  three  times 
— how,  I  know  not,  wretchedly,  I  doubt  not.  It  affords  matter 
for  thought  that  the  last  translation  (or  rather,  in  all  probability, 
miserable  and  faithless  abridgment  of  some  former  one)  was  given 
under  another  name.  What  a  mournful  proof  of  the  incelebrity 
of  this  great  and  amazing  work  among  both  the  public  and  the 
people  !  For  as  Wordsworth,  the  greater  of  the  two  great  men 
of  this  age, — (at  least,  except  Davy  and  him,  I  have  known,  read 
of,  heard  of,  no  others) — for  as  Wordsworth  did  me  the  honor  of 
once  observing  to  me,  the  people  and  the  public  are  two  distinct 
classes,  and,  as  things  go,  the  former  is  likely  to  retain  a  better 
taste,  the  less  it  is  acted  on  by  the  latter.  Yet  Telemachus  is 
in  every  mouth,  in  every  school-boy's  and  school-girl's  hand  !  It 
is  awful  to  say  of  a  work,  like  the  Argenis,  the  style  and  Latinity 
of  which,  judged  (not  according  to  classical  pedantry,  which  pro- 
nounces every  sentence  right  which  can  be  found  in  any  book 
prior  to  Boetius,  however  vicious  the  age,  or  affected  the  author, 
and  every  sentence  wrong,  however  natural  and  beautiful,  which 
has  been  of  the  author's  own  combination, — but)  according  to  the 
universal  logic  of  thought  as  modified  by  feeling,  is  equal  to  that 
of  Tacitus  in  energy  and  genuine  conciseness,  and  is  as  perspicu 
ous  as  that  of  Livy,  whilst  it  is  free  from  the  affectations,  obscu- 
rities, and  lust  to  surprise  of  the  former,  and  seems  a  sort  of 
antithesis  to  the  slowness  and  prolixity  of  the  latter — (this  re- 
mark does  not,  however,  impeach  even  the  classicality  of  the  lan- 
guage, which,  when  the  freedom  and  originality,  the  easy  motion 
and  perfect  command  of  the  thoughts,  are  considered,  is  truly 
wonderful)  : — of  such  a  work  it  is  awful  to  say,  that  it  would 
have  been  well  if  it  had  been  written  in  English  or  Italian  verse  ; 
Yet  the  event  seems  to  justify  the  notion.  Alas  !  it  is  now  too 
late.  What  modern  work,  even  of  the  size  of  the  Paradise  Lost 
— much  less  of  the  Faery  Gtueene — would  be  read  in  the  present 
day,  or  even  bought,  or  be  likely  to  be  bought,  unless  it  were  an 
instructive  work,  as  the  phrase  is,  like  Roscoe's  quartos  of  Lee 
X.,  or  entertaining  like  Boswell's  three  of  Dr.  Johnson's  conver* 


378  NOTES   ON  SELDEN'S  TABLE  TALK. 

sations.  It  may  be  fairly  objected — what  work  of  surpassing 
merit  has  given  the  proof? — Certainly,  none.  Yet  still  there 
are  ominous  facts,  sufficient,  I  fear,  to  afford  a  certain  prophecy 
of  its  reception,  if  such  were  produced. 


NOTES  ON  CHALMERS'S  LIFE  OF  SAMUEL  DANIEL. 

The  justice  of  these  remarks  can  not  be  disputed,  though  some  of  them 
are  too  figurative  for  sober  criticism. 

Most  genuine  !  a  figurative  remark !  If  this  strange  writer 
had  any  meaning,  it  must  be  : — Headly's  criticism  is  just  through- 
out, but  conveyed  in  a  style  too  figurative  for  prose  composition. 
Chalmers's  own  remarks  are  wholly  mistaken  ;  too  silly  for  any 
criticism,  drunk  or  sober,  and  in  language  too  flat  for  any  thing 
In  Daniel's  Sonnets  there  is  scarcely  one  good  line  ;  while  bis 
Hymen's  Triumph,  of  which  Chalmers  says  not  one  word,  exhib- 
its a  continued  series  of  first-rate  beauties  in  thought,  passion,  and 
imagery,  and  in  language  and  metre  is  so  faultless,  that  the  style 
of  that  poem  may  without  extravagance  be  declared  to  be  im- 
perishable English.      1820. 


BISHOP  CORBET. 

I  almost  wonder  that  the  inimitable,  humor  and  the  rich 
sound  and  propulsive  movement  of  the  verse,  have  not  rendered 
Corbet  a  popular  poet.  I  am  convinced  that  a  reprint  of  his 
poems,  with  illustrative  and  chit-chat  biographical  notes,  and  cuts 
by  Cruikshank,  would  take  with  the  public  uncommonly  well. 
September,  1823. 


NOTES  ON  SELDEN'S  TABLE  TALK* 

There  is  more  weighty  bullion  sense  in  this  book,  than  I  ever 
found  in  tli3  same  number  of  pages  of  any  uninspired  writer. 

OPINION. 

Opinion  and  affection  extremely  differ.     I  may  affect  a  woman  best,  but 
it  does  not  follow  I  must  think  her  the  handsomest  woman  in  the  world 

*  These  remarks  on  Selden  were  communicated  by  Mr.  Cary. — Ed. 


NOTES  ON  TOM  JONES.  379 

*  *  *  Opinion  is  something  wherein  I  go  about  to  give  reason  why  all 
the  world  should  think  as  I  think.  Affection  is  a  thing  wherein  I  look  after 
the  pleasing  of  myself. 

Good  !  This  is  the  true  difference  betwixt  the  beautiful  and 
the  agreeable,  which  Knight  and  the  rest  of  that  nlvfioc,  adeov 
have  so  beneficially  confounded,  meretridbus  scilicet  et  Plutoni. 

0  what  an  insight  the  whole  of  this  article  gives  into  a  wise 
man's  heart,  who  has  been  compelled  to  act  with  the  many,  as 
one  of  the  many  !  It  explains  Sir  Thomas  More's  zealous  Ro- 
manism, &c. 

PARLIAMENT. 

Excellent !  0  !  to  have  been  with  Selden  over  his  glass  of 
wine,  making  every  accident  an  outlet  and  a  vehicle  of  wisdom! 

POETRY. 

The  old  poets  had  no  other  reason  but  this,  their  verse  was  sung  to  mu- 
sic :  otherwise  it  had  been  a  senseless  thing  to  have  fettered  up  themselves. 

No  man  can  know  all  things  :  even  Selden  here  talks  igno- 
rantly.  Verse  is  in  itself  a  music,  and  the  natural  symbol  of  that 
union  of  passion  with  thought  and  pleasure,  which  constitutes  the 
essence  of  all  poetry,  as  contra-distinguished  from  science,  and  dis- 
tinguished from  history  civil  or  natural.  To  Pope's  Essay  on 
Man, — in  short,  to  whatever  is  mere  metrical  good  sense  and  wit 
the  remark  applies. 

lb. 

Verse  proves  nothing  but  the  quantity  of  syllables  ;  they  are  not  meant 
for  logic. 

True  ;  they,  that  is,  verses,  are  not  logic  ;  but  they,  are,  or 
ought  to  be,  the  envoys  and  representatives  of  that  vital  passion, 
which  is  the  practical  cement  of  logic  ;  and  without  which,  logic 
must  remain  inert. 


NOTES  ON  TOM  JONES* 

MannePv.s    change    from    generation    to   generation,  and  with 
manners  morals  appear  to  change, — actually  change  with  some 
hut  appear  to  change  with  all  but  the  abandoned.     A  young  man 
*"  Communicated  by  Mr.  Gillman. — Ed. 


880  NOTES  ON  TOM  JONES. 

of  the  present  day  who  should  act  as  Tom  Jones  is  supposed  to 
act  at  Upton,  with  Lady  Bellaston,  &c.  would  not  be  a  Torn 
Jones  ;  and  a  Tom  Jones  of  the  present  day,  without  perhaps 
being  in  the  ground  a  better  man,  would  have  perished  rather 
than  submit  to  be  kept  by  a  harridan  of  fortune.  Therefore  this 
novel  is,  and,  indeed,  pretends  to  be,  no  exemplar  of  conduct. 
But,  notwithstanding  all  this,  I  do  loathe  the  cant  which  can 
recommend  Pamela  and  Clarissa  Harlowe  as  strictly  moral, 
though  they  poison  the  imagination  of  the  young  with  continued 
doses  of  tinct.  lyttce,  while  Tom  Jones  is  prohibited  as  loose.  I 
do  not  speak  of  young  women  ; — but  a  young. man  whose  heart 
or  feelings  can  be  injured,  or  even  his  passions  excited,  by  aught 
in  this  novel,  is  already  thoroughly  corrupt.  There  is  a  cheerful, 
sunshiny,  breezy  spirit  that  prevails  everywhere,  strongly  con- 
trasted with  the  close,  hot,  day-dreamy  continuity  of  Richardson. 
Every  indiscretion,  every  immoral  act,  of  Tom  Jones  (and  it  must 
be  remembered  that  he  is  in  every  one  taken  by  surprise — his  in- 
ward principles  remaining  firm — )  is  so  instantly  punished  by  em- 
barrassment and  unanticipated  evil  consequences  of  his  folly,  that 
the  reader's  mind  is  not  left  for  a  moment  to  dwell  or  run  riot  on 
the  criminal  indulgence  itself.  In  short,  let  the  requisite  allow- 
ance be  made  for  the  increased  refinement  of  our  manners, — and 
then  I  dare  believe  that  no  young  man  who  consulted  his  heart 
and  conscience  only,  without  adverting  to  what  the  world  would 
say — could  rise  from  the  perusal  of  Fielding's  Tom  Jones,  Joseph 
Andrews,  or  Amelia,  without  feeling  himself  a  better  man ; — at 
least,  without  an  intense  conviction  that  he  could  not  be  guilty 
of  a  base  act. 

If  I  want  a  servant  or  mechanic,  I  wish  to  know  what  he 
does  : — but  of  a  friend,  I  must  know  what  he  is.  And  in  no 
writer  is  this  momentous  distinction  so  finely  brought  forward  as 
by  Fielding.  We  do  not  care  what  Blifil  does  ; — the  deed,  as 
separate  from  the  agent,  may  be  good  or  ill ;  but  Blifil  is  a 
villain  ; — and  we  feel  him  to  be  so  from  the  very  moment  he,  the 
boy  Blifil,  restores  Sophia's  poor  captive  bird  to  its  native  and 
rightful  liberty. 

Book  xiv.  ch.  8. 

Notwithstanding  the  sentiment  of  the  Roman  satirist,  which  denies  the 
divinity  of  fortune ;  and  the  opinion  of  Seneca  to  the  same  purpose ;  Cicero, 
who  was.  I  believe,  a  wiser  man  than  either  ot  them,  expressly  ho!d3  the 


NOTES   ON  TOM  JONES.  381 

contrary  ;  and  certain  it  is  there  are  some  incidents  in  life  so  very  strange 
and  unaccountable,  that  it  seems  to  require  more  than  human  skill  and 
foresight  in  producing  them. 

Surely  Juvenal,  Seneca,  and  Cicero,  all  meant  the  same  thing, 
namely,  that  there  was  no  chance,  but  instead  of  it  providence, 
either  human  or  divine. 

Book  xv.  ch.  9. 

The  rupture  with  Lady  Bellaston.  r 

Even  in  the  most  questionable  part  of  Tom  Jones,  I  can  not 
but  think,  after  frequent  reflection,  that  an  additional  paragraph, 
more  fully  and  forcibly  unfolding  Tom  Jones's  sense  of  self-degra- 
dation on  the  discovery  of  the  true  character  of  the  relation  in 
which  he  had  stood  to  Lady  Bellaston,  and  his  awakened  feeling 
of  the  dignity  of  manly  chastity,  would  have  removed  in  great 
measure  any  just  objections, — at  all  events  relatively  to  Fielding 
himself,  and  with  regard  to  the  state  of  manners  in  his  time. 

Book  xvi.  ch.  5. 

That  refined  degree  of  Platonic  affection  which  is  absolutely  detached 
from  the  flesh,  and  is  indeed  entirely  and  purely  spiritual,  is  a  gift  confined 
to  the  female  part  of  the  creation ;  many  of  whom  I  have  heard  declare 
(and  doubtless  with  great  truth)  that  they  would,  with  the  utmost  readi- 
ness, resign  a  lover  to  a  rival,  when  such  resignation  was  proved  to  be 
necessary  for  the  temporal  interest  of  such  lover. 

I  firmly  believe  that  there  are  men  capable  of  such  a  sacrifice, 
and  this,  without  pretending  to,  or  even  admiring  or  seeing  any 
virtue  in,  this  absolute  detachment  from  the  flesh. 


ANOTHER  SET  OF  NOTES  ON  TOM  JONES. 
Book  i.  ch.  4. 

"  Beyond  this  the  country  gradually  rose  into  a  ridge  of  wild  mountains, 
the  tops  of  which  were  above  the  clouds." 

As  this  is  laid  in  Somersetshire,  the  clouds  must  have  been 
unusually  low.  One  would  be  more  apt  to  think  of  Skiddaw  or 
Ben  Nevis,  than  of  Q,uantock  or  Mendip  Hills. 

Book  xi.  ch.  1. 

Nor  can  the  Devil  receive  a  guest  more  worthy  of  him,  nor  possibly 
tnore  welcome  to  him  than  a  slanderer." 


382  NOTES  ON  JONATHAN   WILD. 

The  very  word  Devil,  Diabolus,  means  a  slanderer. 
Book  xii.  ch.  12. 

*'  And  here  we  will  make  a  concession,  which  would  not  perhaps  have 
been  expected  from  us ;  That  no  limited  form  of  government  is  capable  of 
rising  to  the  same  degree  of  perfection,  or  of  producing  the  same  benefits  to 
society  with  this.  Mankind  has  never  been  so  happy,  as  when  the  greatest 
part  of  the  then  known  world  was  under  the  dominion  of  a  single  master ; 
and  this  state  of  their  felicity  continued  under  the  reign  of  five  successive 
Princes." 

Strange  that  such  a  lover  of  political  liberty  as  Fielding  should 
have  forgotten  that  the  glaring  infamy  of  the  Roman  morals  and 
manners  immediately  on  the  ascent  of  Commodus  prove,  that 
even  five  excellent  despots  in  succession  were  but  a  mere  tempo- 
rary palliative  of  the  evils  inherent  in  despotism  and  its  causes. 
Think  you  that  all  the  sub-despots  were  Trajans  and  Antonines  ? 
No  !  Rome  was  left  as  it  was  found  by  them,  incapable  of 
freedom. 

Book  xviii.  ch.  4. 

Plato  himself  concludes  his  Phsedon  with  declaring,  that  his  best  argument 
amounts  only  to  raise  a  probability ;  and  Cicero  himself  seems  rather  to 
profess  an  inclination  to  believe,  than  any  actual  belief,  in  the  doctrines  of 
immortality. 

No  !  Plato  does  not  say  so,  but  speaks  as  a  philosophic  Christian 
would  do  of  the  best  arguments  of  the  scientific  intellect.  The 
assurance  is  derived  from  a  higher  principle.  If  this  be  Method- 
ism Plato  and  Socrates  were  arrant  Methodists  and  New  Light 
men  ;  but  I  would  ask  Fielding  what  ratiocinations  do  more  than 
raise  a  high  degree  of  probability.  But  assuredly  an  historic  be- 
lief is  far  different  from  Christian  faith. 

No  greater  proof  can  be  conceived  of  the  strength  of  the  in- 
stinctive anticipation  of  a  future  state  than  that  it  was  believed 
at  all  by  the  Greek  Philosophers,  with  their  vague  and  (Plato 
excepted)  Pantheistic  conception  of  the  First  Cause.     S.  T.  C. 


JONATHAN  WILD.* 

Jonathan  Wild  is   assuredly  the  best  of  all   the  fictions  in 
which  a  villain  is  throughout  the  prominent  character.      But 
how  impossible  it  is  by  any  force  of  genius  to  create  a  sustained 
*  Communicated  by  Mr.  Gillman. — Ed. 


NOTES   ON  JUNIUS.  333 

attractive  interest  for  such  a  ground- work,  and  how  the  mind 
wearies  of,  and  shrinks  from,  the  more  than  painful  interest,  the 
(iiarjrbv,  of  utter  depravity,— Fielding  himself  felt  and  endeavor- 
ed to  mitigate  and  remedy  by  the  (on  all  other  principles)  far  too 
large  a  proportion,  and  too  quick  recurrence,  of  the  interposed 
chapters  of  moral  reflection,  like  the  chorus  in  the  Greek  tragedy, 
— admirable  specimens  as  these  chapters  are  of  profound  irony 
and  philosophic  satire.  Chap.  vi.  Book  2,  on  Hats,* — brief  as  it 
is,  exceeds  any  thing  even  in  Swift's  Lilliput,  or  Tale  of  the  Tub. 
How  forcibly  it  applies  to  the  Whigs,  Tories,  and  Radicals  of  our 
own  times. 

Whether  the  transposition  of  Fielding's  scorching  wit  (as  B.  hi. 
c.  xiv.)  to  the  mouth  of  his  hero  be  objectionable  on  the  ground 
of  incredvlus  odi,  or  is  to  be  admired  as  answering  the  author's 
purpose  by  unrealizing  the  story,  in  order  to  give  a  deeper  real- 
ity to  the  truths  intended, — I  must  leave  doubtful,  yet  myself  in- 
clining to  the  latter  judgment.     27th  Feb.  1832. 


NOTES  ON  JUNIUS.     180Y. 

STAT  NOMINIS   UMBRA. 

\    As  he  never  dropped  the  mask,  so  he  too  often  used  the  poison- 
ed dagger  of  an  assassin. 

Dedication  to  the  English  nation. 
The  whole  of  this  dedication  reads  like  a  string  of  aphorisms 
arranged  in  chapters,  and  classified  by  a  resemblance  of  subject, 
or  a  cento  of  points. 

lb.  If  an  honest,  and  I  may  truly  affirm  a  laborious,  zeal  for  the  public 
service  has  given  me  any  weight  in  your  esteem,  let  me  exhort  and  conjure 
you  never  to  suffer  an  invasion  of  your  political  constitution,  however 
minute  the  instance  may  appear,  to  pass  by,  without  a  determined,  persever- 
ing resistance. 

A  longer  sentence  and  proportionately  inelegant. 

I  Ib-  !f  you  reflect  that  in  the  changes  of  administration  which  have  marked 
and  disgraced  the  present  reign,  although  your  warmest  patriots  have,  in 

1  *  '  In  which  our  hero  makes  a  speech  well  worthy  to  be  celebrated  •  and 
[the  behavior  of  one  of  the  gang,  perhaps  more  unnatural  than  any  other 
ii)art  of  this  history.' 


3g4  NOTES  ON  JUNIUS. 

i*a  ™rti  the  lawful  and  unlawful  authority  of  the 
theh'  TdtTX^ rSi  «  iip™nte  have  been  held  forth  to 
crown,  and  ^^°»^e^n  in  offiPce  has  ever  promoted  or  enconraged 
I ^2  nortec!  Z S  of  parliament,  but  tbat  (whoever  waa 
min  tt)  t  ppoStion  to  this  measure,  ever  since  the  septennial  act  pas. 
Xhas  been  constant  and  uniform  on  the  part  of  government. 

Long,  and  as  usual,  inelegant.  Junius  can  not  manage  a  long 
sentence  ;  it  has  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  a  snapp.sh  figure- 
dance. 

PREFACE. 

An  excellent  preface,  and  the  sentences  not  so  snipt  as  In  the 
dedication.     The  paragraph  near  the  conclusion  beginning  wi  h 
-some  opinion  may  now  he  expected,"   &c.  and  ending  with 
-relation  between  guilt  and  punishment,"  deserves  to  be  quoted 
as  a  master-piece  of  rhetorical  ratiocination  in  a  series  of  ques- 
tions that  permit  no  answer  ;  or  (as  Junius  says)  cany  their  own 
answer  along  with  them.     The  great  art  of  Junius  is  never  to 
say  too  much,  and  to  avoid  with  oqual  anxiety  a  common-place 
manner,   and   matter  that  is  not  common-place.      If  ever   to 
deviates  into  any  originality  of  thought,  he  takes  care  that  it 
shall  be  such  as  excites  surprise  for  its  acuteness,  rather  than  ad- 
miration for  its  profundity.     He  takes  care?    say  rather   that 
nature  took  care  for  him.     It  is  impossible  to  detract  from  the 
merit  of  these  Letters  :  they  are  suited  to  their  purpose  and  per- 
feet  in  their  kind.     They  impel  to  action,  not  thought.     Hac 
they  been  profound  or  subtle  in  thought,  or  majestic  and  sweep 
ing  in  composition,  they  would  have  been  adapted  for  the  close 
of°a  Sydney,  or  for  a  House  of  Lords  such  as  it  was  in  the  tun. 
of  Lord  Bacon  ;  but  they  are  plain  and  sensible  whenever  th 
author  is  in  the  right,  and  whether  right  or  wrong,  always  shrew, 
and  epigrammatic,  and  fitted  for  the  coffee-house,  the  exchange 
the  lobby  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  to  be  read  aloud  at 
public  meeting.     When  connected,  dropping  the  forms  of  conne. 
tion  desultory  without  abruptness  or  appearance  of  disconnects 
epigrammatic  and  antithetical  to  excess,  sententious  and  persona 
regardless  of  right  or  wrong,  yet  well-skilled  to  act  the  part  of  a 
honest  warm-hearted  man,  and  even  when  he  is  in  the  right,  sa; 
in"  the  truth  but  never  proving  it,  much  less  attempting  to  boj 
torn  it,— this  is  the  character  of  Junius  ;— and  on  this  charade 

1 


NOTES  ON  JUNIUS.  385 

and  in  the  mould  of  these  writings  must  every  man  cast  himself, 
who  would  wish  in  factious  times  to  be  the  important  and  long 
remembered  agent  of  a  faction.  I  believe  that  I  could  do  all  that 
Junius  has  done,  and  surpass  him  by  doing  many  things  which  he 
has  not  done  ;  for  example, — by  an  occasional  induction  of  start- 
ling facts,  in  the  manner  of  Tom  Paine,  and  lively  illustrations 
and  witty  applications  of  good  stories  and  appropriate  anecdotes 
in  the  manner  of  Home  Tooke.  I  believe  I  could  do  it  if  it  were 
in  my  nature  to  aim  at  this  sort  of  excellence,  or  to  be  enamored 
of  the  fame,  and  immediate  influence,  which  would  be  its  conse- 
quence and  reward.  But  it  is  not  in  my  nature.  I  not  only  love 
truth,  but  I  have  a  passion  for  the  legitimate  investigation  of 
truth.  The  love  of  truth  conjoined  with  a  keen  delight  in  a  strict 
and  skilful  yet  impassioned  argumentation,  is  my  master-passion, 
and  to  it  are  subordinated  even  the  love  of  liberty  and  all  my 
public  feelings — and  to  it  whatever  I  labor  under  of  vanity, 
ambition,  and  all  my  inward  impulses. 

Letter  I.  From  this  Letter  all  the  faults  and  excellencies  of 
Junius  may  be  exemplified.  The  moral  and  political  aphorisms 
are  just  and  sensible,  the  irony  in  which  his  personal  satire  is  con- 
veyed is  fine,  yet  always  intelligible  ;  but  it  approaches  too  nearly 
to  the  nature  of  a  sneer  ;  the  sentences  are  cautiously  constructed 
without  the  forms  of  connection  ;  the  he  and  it  everywhere  sub- 
stituted for  the  who  and  which  ;  the  sentences  are  short,  labori- 
ously balanced,  and  the  antitheses  stand  the  test  of  analysis  much 
better  than  Johnson's.  These  are  all  excellencies  in  their  kind  ; 
— where  is  the  defect  ?  In  this  ; — there  is  too  much  of  each, 
and  there  is  a  defect  of  many  things,  the  presence  of  which  would 
have  been  not  only  valuable  for  their  own  sakes,  but.  for  the  re- 
lief and  variety  which  they  would  have  given.  It  is  observable 
too  that  every  Letter  adds  to  the  faults  of  these  Letters,  while  it 
weakens  the  effect  of  their  beauties. 

L.  III.  A  capital  Letter,  addressed  to  a  private  person,  and 
intended  as  a  sharp  reproof  for  intrusion.  Its  short  sentences,  its 
witty  perversions  and  deductions,  its  questions  and  omissions  of 
connectives,  all  in  their  proper  places  are  dramatically  good. 

L.  V.  For  my  own  part,  I  willingly  leave  it  to  the  public  to  determine 
whether  your  vindication  of  your  friend  has  been  as  able  and  judicious  as  it 
was  certainly  well  intended ;  and  you,  I  think,  may  be  satisfied  witli  the 
warm  acknowledgments  he  already  owes  you  for  making  him  the  principal 

vol.  iv  U 


S86  NOTES  ON  JUNIUS. 

figure  in  a  piece  in  which,  but  for  your  amicable  assistance,  he  might  har« 
passed  without  particular  notice  or  distinction. 

A  long  sentence  and,  as  usual,  inelegant  and  cumbrous.  This 
Letter  is°a  faultless  composition  with  exception  of  the  one  long 
sentence. 

L.  VII.  These  are  the  gloomy  companions  of  a  disturbed  imagination  • 
the  melancholy  madness  of  poetry,  without  the  inspiration. 

The  rhyme  is  a  fault.  '  Fancy'  had  been  better  ;  though  but 
for  the  rhyme,  imagination  is  the  fitter  word 

lb.  Such  a  question  might  perhaps  discompose  the  gravity  of  his  muscles, 
but  I  believe  it  would  little  affect  the  tranquillity  of  his  conscience. 

A  false  antithesis,  a  mere  verbal  balance  ;  there  are  far,  far 
too  many  of  these.  However,  with  these  few  exceptions,  this 
'  Letter  is  a  blameless  composition.  Junius  may  be  safely  studied 
as  a  model  for  letters  where  he  truly  writes  letters.  Those  to 
the  Duke  of  Grafton  and  others,  are  small  pamphlets  in  the  form 
of  letters. 

L.  VIII.  To  do  justice  to  your  Grace's  humanity,  you  felt  for  Mac  Quick 
as  you  ought  to  do ;  and,  if  you  had  been  contented  to  assist  him  indirectly, 
without  a  notorious  denial  of  justice,  or  openly  insulting  the  sense  of  the 
nation,  you  might  have  satisfied  every  duty  of  political  friendship,  without 
committing  the  honor  of  your  sovereign,  or  hazarding  the  reputation  of  hid 
government. 

An  inelegant  cluster  of  withouts.  Junius  asks  questions  in- 
comparably well ; — but  ne  quid  nimis. 

L.  IX.  Perhaps  the  fair  way  of  considering  these  Letters  would 
be  as  a  kind  of  satirical  poems  ;  the  short,  and  forever  balanced, 
sentences  constitute  a  true  metre  ;  and  the  connection  is  that  of 
satiric  poetry,  a  witty  logic,  an  association  of  thoughts  by  amus- 
ing semblances  of  cause  and  effect,  the  sophistry  of  which  the 
reader  has  an  interest  in  not  stopping  to  detect,  for  it  flatters  his 
love  of  mischief,  and  makes  the  sport. 

L.  XII.  One  of  Junius's  arts,  and  which  gives  me  a  high  no- 
tion of  his  genius,  as  a  poet  and  satirist,  is  this  :— he  takes  for 
granted  the  existence  of  a  character  that  never  did  and  never  can 
exist,  and  then  employs  his  wit,  and  surprises  and  amuses  his 
readers  with  analyzing  its  incompatibilities. 

L.  XIV.  Continual  sneer,  continual  irony,  all  excellent,  if  H 


WONDERFULNESS  OF  PEOSE.  387 

were  not  for  the  '  all ;' — but  a  countenance,  with  a  malignant 
smile  in  statuary  fixure  on  it,  becomes  at  length  an  object  of  aver- 
sion, however  beautiful  the  face,  and  however  beautiful  the  smile. 
We  are  relieved,  in  some  measure,  from  this  by  frequent  just  and 
well- expressed  moral  aphorisms  ;  but  then  the  preceding  and  fol- 
lowing irony  gives  them  the  appearance  of  proceeding  from  the 
head,  not  from  the  heart.  This  objection  would  be  less  felt,  when 
the  Letters  were  first  published  at  considerable  intervals ;  but 
Junius  wrote  for  posterity. 

L.  XXIII.  Sneer  and  irony  continued  with  such  gross  violation 
of  good  sense,  as  to  be  perfect] y  nonsense.  The  man  who  can 
address  another  on  his  most  detestable  vices  in  a  strain  of  cold 
continual  irony,  is  himself  a  wretch. 

L.  XXXY.  To  honor  them  with  a  determined  predilection  and  confidence 
in  exclusion  of  your  English  subjects,  who  placed  your  family,  and,  in  spite 
of  treachery  and  rebellion,  have  supported  it  upon  the  throne,  is  a  mistake 
too  gross  even  for  the  unsuspecting  generosity  of  youth. 

The  words  '  upon  the  throne,'  stand  unfortunately  for  the  har- 
monious effect  of  the  balance  of  '  placed'  and  '  supported.' 

This  address  to  the  king  is  almost  faultless  in  composition,  and 
has  been  evidently  tormented  with  the  file.  But  it  has  fewer 
beauties  than  any  other  long  letter  of  Junius ;  and  it  is  utterly 
undramatic.  There  is  nothing  in  the  style,  the  transitions,  or 
the  sentiments,  which  represents  the  passions  of  a  man  embold- 
ening himself  to  address  his  sovereign  personally.  Like  a  Pres- 
byterian's prayer,  you  may  substitute  almost  everywhere  the 
third  for  the  second  person  without  injury.  The  newspaper,  his 
closet,  and  his  own  person  were  alone  present  to  the  author's  in- 
tention and  imagination.  This  makes  the  composition  vapid.  It 
possesses  an  Isocratic  correctness,  when  it  should  have  had  the 
force  and  drama  of  an  oration  of  Demosthenes.  From  this,  how- 
ever, the  paragraph  beginning  with  the  words  '  As  to  the  Scotch,' 
and  also  the  last  two  paragraphs  must  be  honorably  excepted. 
They  are,  perhaps,  the  finest  passages  in  the  whole  collection. 

WONDERFULNESS  OF  PROSE. 

It  has  just  struck  my  feelings  that  the  Pherecydean  origin  of 
prose  being  granted,  prose  must  have  struck  men  with  greatei 
admiration  than  poetry.     In  the  latter  it  was  the  language  of 


388  NOTES  ON  HERBERT'S  TEMPLE 

passion  and  emotion  :  it  is  what  they  themselves  spoke  and 
heard  in  moments  of  exultation,  indignation,  &c.  But  to  hear 
an  evolving  roll,  or  a  succession  of  leaves,  talk  continually  the 
language  of  deliherate  reason  in  a  form  of  continued  preconcep- 
tion, of  a  Z  already  possessed  when  A  was  being  uttered— this 
must  have  appeared  godlike.  I  feel  myself  in  the  same  state, 
when  in  the  perusal  of  a  soher,  yet  elevated  and  harmonious  suc- 
cession of  sentences  and  periods,  I  abstract  my  mind  from  the 
particular  passage  and  sympathize  with  the  wonder  of  the  com- 
mon people,  who  say  of  an  eloquent  man  :— '  He  talks  like  a 
book  !' 

NOTES  ON  HERBERT'S  TEMPLE  AND  HARVEY'S  SYNAGOGUE 

G.  Herbert  is  a  true  poet,  but  a  poet  sui  generis,  the  merits 
of  whose  poems  will  never  be  felt  without  a  sympathy  with  the 
mind  and  character  of  the  man.  To  appreciate  this  volume,  it 
is  not  enough  that  the  reader  possesses  a  cultivated  judgment, 
classical  taste,  or  even  poetic  sensibility,  unless  he  be  likewise  a 
Christian,  and  both  a  zealous  and  an  orthodox,  both  a  devout 
and  a  devotional  Christian.  But  even  this  will  not  quite  suffice. 
He  must  be  an  affectionate  and  dutiful  child  of  the  Church,  and 
from  habit,  conviction,  and  a  constitutional  predisposition  to  cer- 
emoniousness,  in  piety  as  in  manners,  find  her  forms  and  ordi- 
nances aids  of  religion,  not  sources  of  formality  ;  for  religion  is 
the  element  in  which  he  lives,  and  the  region  in  which  he  moves 

The  Church,  say  rather  the  Churchmen  of  England,  under  the 
two  first  Stuarts,  has  been  charged  with  a  yearning  after  the 
Romish  fopperies,  and  even  the  papistic  usurpations  ;  but  we 
shall  decide  more  correctly,  as  well  as  more  charitably,  if  for  the 
Romish  and  papistic  we  substitute  the  patristic  leaven.  There 
even  was  (natural  enough  from  their  distinguished  learning,  and 
knowledge  of  ecclesiastical  antiquities)  an  overrating  of  the 
Church  and  of  the  Fathers,  for  the  first  five  or  even  six  centu- 
ries ;  these  lines  on  the  Egyptian  monks,  "  Holy  Macanus  and 
great  Anthony"  (p.  205)  supply  a  striking  instance  and  illustra- 
tion of  this. 

P.  10. 

If  thou  he  single,  all  thy  goods  and  ground 
Submit  to  love  •  but  yet  not  more  than  all. 


AND  HARVEY'S  SYNAGOGUE.  8S9 

Give  one  estate  as  one  life.    None  is  bound 
To  work  for  two,  who  brought  himself  to  thrall. 
God  made  me  one  man ;  love  makes  me  no  more, 
Till  labor  come,  and  make  my  weakness  score.  ' 

I  do  not  understand  this  stanza. 
P.  41. 

My  flesh  began  unto  my  soul  in  pain, 
Sicknesses  clave  my  bones,  &c. 

Either  a  misprint,  or  a  noticeable  idiom  of  the  word  '  bejran  »> 
Yes  .  and  a  very  beautiful  idiom  it  is  :  the  first  colloquy  or  ad- 
dress  of  the  flesh.  4  y 

P.  46. 

What  though  my  body  run  to  dust  ? 
Faith  cleaves  unto  it,  counting  every  grain, 
With  an  exact  and  most  particular  trust, 
Reserving  all  for  flesh  again. 

I  find  few  historical  facts  so  difficult  of  solution  as  the  continu- 
ance,  in  Protestantism,  of  this  anti-scriptural  superstition. 
P.  54.  Second  poem  on  The  Holy  Scriptures. 

This  verse  marks  that,  and  both  do  make  a  motion 
Unto  a  third  that  ten  leaves  off  doth  lie. 

The  spiritual  unity  of  the  Bible  =  the  order  and  connection  of 
organic  forms  in  which  the  unity  of  life  is  shown,  though  as 

widely  dispersed  m  the  world  of  sight  as  the  text. 
lb. 

Then  as  dispersed  herbs  do  watch  a  potion, 
These  three  make  up  some  Christian's  destiny. 

Some  misprint. 
P.  87. 

Sweet  Spring,  full  of  sweet  days  and  roses, 

A  box  where  sweets  compacted  he. 

P.  92.     Man. 

Each  thing  is  full  of  duty  : 
Waters  united  are  our  navigation  : 
Distinguished,  our  habitation  ; 

Below,  our  drink  ;  above,  our  meat  : 
Both  are  our  cleanliness.     Hath  one  such  beauty  ? 

Then  how  are  all  things  neat ! 

«  Distinguished.'     I  understand  this  but  imperfectly.     Did  the* 


390  NOTES  ON  HERBERT'S  TEMPLE 

form  an  island  ?  and  the  next  lines  refer  perhaps  to  the  then  be- 
lief  that  all  fruits  grow  and  are  nourished  by  water.     But  then 
how  is  the  ascending  sap  '  our  cleanliness  V     Perhaps,  therefore, 
the  rains. 
P.  140. 

But  he  doth  bid  us  take  his  blood  for  wine. 

Nay,  the  contrary  ;  take  wine  to  be  blood,  and  the  blood  of  a 
man  who  died  1800  years  ago.  This  is  the  faith  which  even 
the  Church  of  England  demands  ;*  for  consubstantiation  only 
adds  a  mystery  to  that  of  transubstantiation,  which  it  implies. 

P.  175.  The  Flower. 

A  delicious  poem. 

lb. 

How  fresh,  0  Lord,  how  sweet  and  clear 
Are  thy  returns  !  e'en  as  the  flowers  in  spring ; 

To  which,  besides  their  own  demean, 
The  late  past  frosts  tributes  of  pleasure  bring. 
Grief  melts  away 
Like  snow  in  May, 
As  if  there  were  no  such  cold  thing. 

"  The  late  past  frosts  tributes  of  pleasure  bring." 


Epitritus  primus  +  Dactyl  -f-  Trochee  +  a  long  word  —  syl- 
lable, which,  together  with  the  pause  intervening  between  it  and 
the  word  —  trochee,  equals  u  u  u  -  form  a  pleasing  variety  in  the 
Pentameter  Iambic  with  rhymes.     Ex.  gr. 

*  This  is  one  of  my  Father's  marginalia,  which  I  can  hardly  persuade 
myself  he  would  have  re-written  just  as  it  stands.  Where  does  the  Church 
of  England  affirm  that  the  wine  per  se  literally  is  the  blood  shed  1800 
years  ago  ?  The  language  of  our  Church  is  that  "  we  receiving  these  crea- 
tures of  bread  and  wine,  &c.  may  be  partakers  of  His  most  blessed  body 
and  blood  :"  that  "  to  such  as  rightly  receive  the  same,  the  cup  of  blessing 
is  a  partaking  of  the  blood  of  Christ."  Does  not  this  language  intimate, 
that  the  blood  of  Christ  is  spiritually  produced  in  the  soul  through  a  faith- 
ful reception  of  the  appointed  symbols,  rather  than  that  the  wine  itself, 
apart  from  the  soul,  has  become  the  blood  ?  In  one  sense,  indeed,  it  is  the 
blood  of  Christ  to  the  soul :  it  may  be  metaphorically  called  so,  if,  by  means 
of  it,  the  blood  is  really,  though  spiritually,  partaken.  More  than  this  ia 
Burely  not  affirmed  in  our  formularies,  nor  taught  by  our  great  divines  ia 
general.  I  do  not  write  these  words  by  way  of  argument,  but  because  1 
can  not  re-print  such  a  note  of  my  Father's,  which  has  excited  surprise  in 
some  of  his  studious  readers,  without  a  protest. — S.  C. 


891 

The  late  past  frosts  |  tributes  of  |  pleasure  |  bring. 

N.B.  First,  the  difference  between  -  u  |  —  and  an  amphima- 
cer  —  v  —  |  and  this  not  always  or  necessarily  arising  out  of  the 
latter  being  one  word.  It  may  even  consist  of  three  words,  yet 
the  effect  be  the  same.  It  is  the  pause  that  makes  the  differ- 
ence. Secondly,  the  expediency,  if  not  necessity,  that  the  first 
syllable  both  of  the  Dactyl  and  the  Trochee  should  be  short  by 
quantity,  and  only  =  —  by  force  of  accent  or  position  —  the  Epi- 
trite  being  true  lengths. — Whether  the  last  syllable  be  -  or  =  — 

the  force  of  the  rhymes  renders  indifferent.     Thus,   

"  As  if  there  were  no  such  cold  thing''     Had  been  no  such 
thing. 
P.  181. 

Thou  who  condemnest  Jewish  hate,  &e. 
Call  home  thine  eye  (that  busy  wanderer), 
That  choice  may  be  thy  story. 

Their  choice. 

P.  184. 

Nay,  thou  dost  make  me  sit  and  dine 
E'en  in  my  enemies'  sight. 
Foemen's. 

P.  201.     Judgment. 

Almighty  Judge,  how  shall  poor  wretches  brook 
Thy  dreadful  look,  <fec. 

What  others  mean  to  do,  I  know  not  well ; 

Yet  I  here  tell, 
That  some  will  turn  thee  to  some  leaves  therein 

So  void  of  sin, 
That  they  in  merit  shall  excel. 

1  should  not  have  expected  from  Herbert  so  open  an  avowal 
of  Romanism  in  tfre  article  of  merit.-  In  the  same  spirit  ia 
"Holy  Macarius,  and  great  Anthony,"  p.  205.^ 

*  Herbert,  however,  adds : 

But  I  resolve,  when  thou  shalt  call  for  mine, 

That  to  decline, 
And  thrust  a  Testament  into  thy  hand : 

Let  that  be  scann'd  ; 
There  thou  shalt  find  my  faults  are  thine. 
Martin  Luther  himself  might  have  penned  this  concluding  stanza. 
Since  I  wrote  the  above,  a  note  in  Mr.  Pickering's  edition  of  Herbert  has 
oeen  pointed  out  to  me  : 


392  NOTES  ON  HERBERT'S  TEMPLE 

P.  237      The  Communion  Table. 

And  for  the  matter  whereof  it  is  made, 

The  matter  is  not  much, 

Although  it  be  of  tuch, 
Or  wood,  or  metal,  what  will  last,  or  fade ; 

So  vanity 
And  superstition  avoided  be. 

Tuch  rhyming  to  much,  from  the  German  tuch,  cloth,  I  nevoi 
met  with  before,  as  an  English  word.  So  I  find  platt  for  foli- 
age in  Stanley's  Hist,  of  Philosophy,  p.  22. 

P.  252.    The  Synagogue,  by  Christopher  Harvey.    The  Bishop. 

But  who  can  show  of  old  that  ever  any 
Presbyteries  without  their  bishops  were : 
Though  bishops  without  presbyteries  many,  &a. 

An  instance  of  proving  too  much.     If  Bishop  without  Presb. 
B.  =  Presb.  i.  e.  no  Bishop. 
P.  253.     The  Bishop. 

To  rule  and  to  be  ruled  are  distinct, 
And  several  duties,  severally  belong 
To  several  persons. 

Functions  of  times,  but  not  persons,  of  necessity  ?  Ex.  Bishoo 
to  Archbishop. 

P.  255.      Church  Festivals. 

Who  loves  not  you,  doth  but  in  vain  profess 
That  he  loves  God,  or  heaven,  or  hajjpiness. 

"  The  Rev.  Dr.  Bliss  has  kindly  furnished  the  following  judicious  remark, 
and  which  is  proved  to  be  correct,  as  the  word  is  printed  '  heare'  in  the 
first  edition  (1633).  He  says  :  'Let  me  take  this  opportunity  of  mention- 
ing what  a  very  learned  and  able  friend  pointed  out  on  this  note.  The  fact 
is,  Coleridge  has  been  misled  by  an  error  of  the  press. 

What  others  mean  to  do,  I  know  not  well, 
Yet  I  here  tell,  &c.  &e. 

should  be  hear  tell.  The  sense  is  then  obvious,  and  Herbert  is  not  made  to 
do  that  which  he  was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  have  done,  namely,  to 
avow  '  Romanism  in  the  article  of  merit.'  " 

This  suggestion  once  occurred  to  myself,  and  appears  to  be  right,  as  it  is 
verified  by  the  first  edition :  but  at  the  time  it  seemed  to  me  so  obvious, 
that  Burely  the  correction  would  have  been  made  before  if  there  had  noS 
been  some  reason  against  it. — S.  C. 


AND  HARVEY'S  SYNAGOGUE.  393 

Equally  unthinking  and  uncharitable  ; — I  approve  of  them  ; — > 
but  yet  remember  Roman  Catholic  idolatry,  and  that  it  origi- 
nated in  such  high-flown  metaphors  as  these. 

P.  255.     The  Sabbath,  or  Lord's  Day. 

Hail  Vail 

Holy  Wholly 

King  of  days,  &o.  To  thy  praise,  &c. 

Make  it  sense  and  lose  the  rhyme  ;  or  make  it  rhyme  and  lose 
the  sense. 

P.  258.     The  Nativity,  or  Christmas  Day. 

Unfold  thy  face,  unmask  thy  ray, 
Shine  forth,  bright  sun,  double  the  day, 
Let  no  malignant  misty  fume,  <fcc. 

The  onl;y  poem  in  The  Synagogue  which  possesses  poetic 
merit ;  with  a  few  changes  and  additions  this  would  be  a  strik- 
ing poem. 

Substitute  the  following  for  the  fifth  to  the  eighth  line. 

To  sheath  or  blunt  one  happy  ray, 
That  wins  new  splendor  from  the  day. 
This  day  that  gives  thee  power  to  rise, 
And  shine  on  hearts  as  well  as  eyes : 
This  birth-day  of  all  souls,  when  first 
On  eyes  of  flesh  and  blood  did  burst 
That  primal  great  lucific  light, 
That  rays  to  thee,  to  us  gave  sight. 

P.  267.      Whit-Sunday. 

Nay,  startle  not  to  hear  that  rushing  wind, 
Wherewith  this  place  is  shaken,  &c. 

To  hear  at  once  so  great  variety 
Of  language  from  them  come,  &c. 

The  spiritual  miracle  was  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost :  the 
GKtvvard  the  wind  and  the  tongues  :  and  so  St.  Peter  himself  ex- 
plains it.  That  each  individual  obtained  the  power  of  speaking 
all  languages,  is  neither  contained  in,  nor  fairly  deducible  from, 
St.  Luke's  account. 


394  NOTES  ON  GKAY. 

P.  269.     Trinity- Sunday. 

The  Trinity 
In  Unity, 
And  Unity 
In  Trinity, 
All  reason  doth  transcend. 

Most  true,  but  not  contradict.     Reason  is  to  faith,  as  the  eye 
to  the  telescope. 

EXTRACT  FROM  A  LETTER 

OF   S.   T.   COLERIDGE   TO   W.    COLLINS,    R.   A.   PRINTED   IN   THE   LIFE   OF   COLLINS 
BY   HIS   SON.      VOL.    I. 

December,  1818. 
To  feel  the  full  force  of  the  Christian  religion  it  is  perhaps 
necessaiy,  for  many  tempers,  that  they  should  first  be  made  to 
feel,  experimentally,  the  hollowness  of  human  friendship,  the  pre- 
sumptuous emptiness  of  human  hopes.  I  find  more  substantial 
comfort  now  in  pious  George  Herbert's  Temple,  which  I  used  to 
read  to  amuse  myself  with  his  quaintness,  in  short,  only  to  laugh 
at,  than  in  all  the  poetry  since  the  poems  of  Milton.  If  you  have 
not  read  Herbert  I  can  recommend  the  book  to  you  confidently. 
The  poem  entitled  "  The  Flower"  is  especially  affecting,  and  to 
me  such  a  phrase  as  "  and  relish  versing"  expresses  a  sincerity 
and  reality,  which  I  would  unwillingly  exchange  for  the  more 
dignified  "  and  once  more  love  the  Muse,"  &c.  and  so  with  many 
other  of  Herbert's  homely  phrases. 


NOTES  ON  MATHIAS'  EDITION  OF  GRAY. 

ON   A   DISTANT   PROSPECT   OF   ETON   COLLEGE. 

Vol.  i.  p.  9. 

Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 
His  silver-winding  way. — Gray. 

We  want,  methinks,  a  little  treatise  from  some  man  of  flexible 
good  sense,  and  well  versed  in  the  Greek  poets,  especially  Homer, 
the  choral,  and  other  lyrics,  containing  first  a  history  of  com- 
pound epithets,  and  then  the  laws  and  licenses.  I  am  not  so 
much  disposed  as  I  used  to  be  to  quarrel  with  such  an  epithet  as 
11  silver-winding  ;"  ungrammatical  as  the  hyphen  is,  it  is  not 
wholly  illogical,  for  the  phrase  conveys  more  than  silvery  aDd 


NOTES  ON  GRAY.  395 

winding.     It  gives,  namely,  the  unity  of  the  impression,  the  co- 
inherence  of  the  brightness,  the  motion,  and  the  line  of  motion. 
P.  10. 

Say,  Father  Thames,  for  thou  hast  seen 

Full  many  a  sprightly  race 
Disporting  on  thy  margent  green, 

The  paths  of  pleasure  trace ; 
"Who  foremost  now  delight  to  cleave, 
With  pliant  arm,  thy  glassy  -wave  ? 

The  captive  linnet  which  enthral  ? 
"What  idle  progeny  succeed 
To  chase  the  rolling  circle's  speed, 

Or  urge  the  flying  ball  ? — Gray. 

This  is  the  only  stanza  that  appears  to  me  very  objectionable 
in  point  of  diction.  This,  I  must  confess,  is  not  only  falsetto 
throughout,  but  is  at  once  harsh  and  feeble,  and  very  far  the 
worst  ten  lines  in  all  the  works  of  Mr.  Gray,  English  or  Latin, 
prose  or  verse. 
P.  12. 

And  envy  wan,  and  faded  care,1 
Grim-visaged  comfortless  despair,2 
sorrow's  piercing 


And  sorrow's  piercing:  dart.1 


1  Bad  in  the  first,  2  in  the  second,  3  in  the  last  degree. 
P.  18. 

The  proud  are  taught  to  taste  of  pain. — Gray. 

There  is  a  want  of  dignity — a  sort  of  irony  in  this  phrase  to 
my  feeling  that  would  be  more  proper  in  dramatic  than  in  lyric 
composition. 

On  Gray's  Platonica,  vol.  i.  p.  299-547. 

"Whatever  might  be  expected  from  a  scholar,  a  gentleman,  a 
man  of  exquisite  taste,  as  the  quintessence  of  sane  and  sound 
good  sense,  Mr.  Gray  appears  to  me  to  have  performed.  The 
poet  Plato,  the  orator  Plato,  Plato  the  exquisite  dramatist  of  con- 
versation,  the  seer  and  the  painter  of  character,  Plato  the  high- 
bred, highly-educated,  aristocratic  republican,  the  man  and  the 
gentleman  of  quality  stands  full  before  us  from  behind  the  curtain 
as  Gray  has  drawn  it  back.  Even  so  does  Socrates,  the  social 
wise  old  man,  the  practical  moralist.  But  Plato  the  philosopher, 
but  the  divine  Plato,  was  not  to  be  comprehended  within  the  field 
of  vision,  or  be  commanded  by  the  fixed  immovable  telescope  of 


396  NOTES  ON   GRAY. 

Mr.  Locke's  human  understanding.  The  whole  sweep  of  the  best 
philosophic  reflections  of  French  or  English  fabric  in  the  age  of 
our  scholarly  bard,  was  not  commensurate  with  the  mighty  orb. 
The  little,  according  to  my  convictions  at  least,  the  very  little  of 
proper  Platonism  contained  in  the  ivritten  books  of  Plato,  who 
himself,  in  an  epistle,  the  authenticity  of  which  there  is  no  tena 
ble  ground  for  doubting,  as  I  was  rejoiced  to  find  Mr.  Gray 
acknowledge,  has  declared  all  he  had  written  to  be  substantially 
Socratic,  and  not  a  fair  exponent  of  his  own  tenets,*  even  this 
little,  Mr.  Gray  has  either  misconceived  or  honestly  confessed 
that,  as  he  was  not  one  of  the  initiated,  it  was  utterly  beyond  his 
comprehension.  Finally,  to  repeat  the  explanation  with  which  I 
closed  the  last  page  of  these  notes  and  extracts, 

Volsimi e  vidi  Plato 

(ma  non  quel  Plato)  • 

Che'n  quella  schiera  ando  piu  presso  al  segno, 

Al  qual'  aggiunge,  a  chi  dal  Cielo  e  dato.f 

S.  T.  Coleridge,  1819. 
P.  385.     Hippias  Major. 

We  learn  from  this  dialogue  in  how  poor  a  condition  the  art  of  reasoning 
on  moral  and  abstracted  subjects  was  before  the  time  of  Socrates :  for  it  is 
impossible  that  Plato  should  introduce  a  sophist  of  the  first  reputation  for 
eloquence  and  knowledge  in  several  kinds,  talking  in  a  manner  below  the 
absurdity  and  weakness  of  a  child ;  unless  he  had  really  drawn  after  the 
life.  No  less  than  twenty-four  pages  are  here  spent  in  vain,  only  to  force 
it  into  the  head  of  Hippias  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  general  idea;  and 
that,  before  we  can  dispute  on  any  subject,  we  should  give  a  definition  of  it. 

Is  not  this,  its  improbability  out  of  the  question,  contradicted 
by  the  Protagoras  of  Plato's  own  drawing  ?  Are  there  no  authors, 
no  physicians  in  London  at  the  present  moment,  of  "  the  first 
reputation,"  i.  e.  whom  a  certain  class  cry  up  :  for  in  no  other 
sense  is  the  phrase  historically  applicable  to  Hippias,  whom  a 
Sydenham  redivivus  or  a  new  Stahl  might  not  exhibit  as  pompous 
ignoramuses  ?  no  one  Hippias  amongst  them  ?  But  we  need  not 
flee  to  conjectures.  The  ratiocination  assigned  by  Aristotle  and 
Plato  himself  to  Gorgias  and  then  to  the  Eleatic  school,  are  posi- 

*  See  Plato's  second  epistle  typaareov  6jj  col  oY  alviyjuuv  k.  t.  %.  and  to- 
wards the  end  ra  6e  vvv  T^yofieva  "ZuKparovg  earl,  k.  t.  2,.  See  also  the  *Jth 
Epistle,  p.  341. 

f  Petrarch's  Trionfo  delta  Fama,  cap.  terz.  v.  4-6. 


NOTES  ON  GRAY.  897 

tive  proofs  that  Mr.  Gray  has  mistaken  the  satire  of  an  individual 
for  a  characteristic  of  an  age  or  class. 

May  I  dare  whisper  to  the  reeds  without  proclaiming  that  I  am 
in  the  state  of  Midas, — may  I  dare  to  hint  that  Mr.  Gray  himself 
had  not,  and  through  the  spectacles  of  Mr.  Locke  and  his  fol- 
lowers, could  not  have  seen  the  difficulties  which  Hippias  found 
in  a  general  idea,  secundum  Platonem  ? — S.  T.  C. 

P.  386.     Notes  289.  Passages  of  Heraclitus. 

Widrjutiv  6  KuXkiaroQ  aiaxpbg  uklu  ycvei  cv[i(3a7ielv. — 'kvdpunuv  6  co<[>6- 
rarog  rrpog  Qeov  -judy/cdg  <j>avelrai. 

This  latter  passage  is  undoubtedly  the  original  of  that  famous 
thought  in  Pope's  Essay  on  Man,  b.  ii.  : — 

"  And  showed  a  Newton  as  we  show  an  ape." 

I  remember  to  have  met  nearly  the  same  words  in  one  of  our 
elder  Poets. 
Pp.  390-391. 

That  a  sophist  was  a  kind  of  merchant,  or  rather  a  retailer  of  food  for 
the  soul,  and,  like  other  shopkeepers,  would  exert  his  eloquence  to  recom- 
mend his  own  goods.  The  misfortune  was,  we  could  not  carrjr  them  off,  like 
corporeal  viands,  set  them  by  a  while,  and  consider  them  at  leisure,  whether 
they  were  wholesome  or  not,  before  we  tasted  them  :  that  in  this  case  we 
have  no  vessel  but  the  soul  to  receive  them  in,  which  will  necessarily  retain 
a  tincture,  and  perhaps,  much  to  its  prejudice,  of  all  which  is  instilled 
into  it. 

Query,  if  Socrates,  himself  a  scholar  of  the  sophists,  is  accu- 
rate, did  not  the  change  of  6  ooq>6g  into  6  2ocpiax^g,  in  the  single 
case  of  Solon,  refer  to  the  wisdom-causing  influences  of  his  leg- 
islation ?  Mem.  : — to  examine  whether  fpQOPtiairig  was,  or  was 
not,  more  generally  used  at  first  in  malum  sensum,  or  rather  the 
proper  force  originally  of  the  termination  l<JTr\g,  cicrTTJ? — whether 
(as  it  is  evidently  verbal)  it  imply  a  reflex  or  a  transitive  act. 

P.  399.      'Ou  'Jfiudla. 

.This  is  the  true  key  and  great  moral  of  the  dialogue,  that  knowledge 
alone  is  the  source  of  virtue,  and  ignorance  the  source  of  vice;  it  was 
Plato's  own  principle,  see  Plat.  Epist.  vii.  p.  336.  'kfiadla,  eg  fig  irdvra 
nana  -Kdaiv  ippt^corat  ical  j32,aardveL  nal  eig  voTspov  uizoteaeI  Kapirbv  rolg 
yevvrjaacn  TweporaTov.  See  also  Sophist,  pp.  228  and  229,  and  Euthydemu* 
from  pp.  278  to  281,  and  Be  Legib.  L.  hi.  p.  688,  and  probably  it  was  also 


398  BARRY  CORNWALL. 

the  principle  of  Socrates:  the  consequence  of  it  is,  that  virtue  may  b« 
taught,  and  may  be  acquired :  and  that  philosophy  alone  can  point  us  out 
the  way  to  it. 

More  than  our  word,  Ignorance,  is  contained  in  the  "A^cnQla  of 
Plato.  I,  however,  freely  acknowledge,  that  this  was  the  point 
of  view,  from  which  Socrates  did  for  the  most  part  contemplate 
moral  good  and  evil.  Now  and  then  he  seems  to  have  taken  a 
higher  station,  but  soon  quitted  it  for  the  lower,  more  generally 
intelligible.  Hence  the  vacillation  of  Socrates  himself;  hence, 
too,  the  immediate  opposition  of  his  disciples,  Antisthenes  and 
Aristippus.  But  that  this  was  Plato's  own  principle  I  exceed- 
ingly doubt.  That  it  was  not  the  principle  of  Platonism,  as 
taught  by  the  first  Academy  under  Speusippus,  I  do  not  doubt  at 
all.  See  the  xivth  Essay,  pp.  96-102  of  The  Friend.  In  the 
sense  in  which  d/uadlag  nuvxa  xaxa  iggi^anaij  n.  x.  A.  is  main- 
tained in  that  Essay,  so  and  no  otherwise  can  it  be  truly  asserted, 
and  so  and  no  otherwise  did  &g  stuoL  ye  dolel,  Plato  teach  it. 


BARRY  CORNWALL* 

Barry  Cornwall  is  a  poet,  me  saltern  judice :  and  in  that 
sense  of  the  term,  in  which  I  apply  it  to  C.  Lamb  and  W.  Words- 
worth. There  are  poems  of  great  merit,  the  authors  of  which  I 
should  yet  not  feel  impelled  so  to  designate. 

The  faults  of  these  poems  are  no  less  things  of  hope,  than  the 
beauties  ;  both  are  just  what  they  ought  to  be, — that  is,  new. 

If  B.  C.  be  faithful  to  his  genius,  it  in  due  time  will  warn  him, 
that  as  poetry  is  the  identity  of  all  other  knowledges,  so  a  poet 
can  not  be  a  great  poet,  but  as  being  likewise  inclusively  an  his- 
torian and  naturalist,  in  the  light,  as  well  as  the  life,  of  philoso- 
phy :  all  other  men's  worlds  are  his  chaos. 

Hints  obiter  are  : — not  to  permit  delicacy  and  exquisiteness  to 
seduce  into  effeminacy.  Not  to  permit  beauties  by  repetition  to 
become  mannerisms.  To  be  jealous  of  fragmentary  composition, 
— as  epicurism  of  genius,  and  apple-pie  made  all  of  quinces. 
Item,  that  dramatic  poetry  must  be  poetry  hid  in  thought  and 
passion, — not  thought  or  passion  disguised  in  the  dress  of  poetry. 

*  Written  in  Mr.  Lamb's  copy  of  the  '  Dramatic  Scenes.' — Ed. 


ON  THE  MODE  OF  STUDYING  KANT.  399 

Lastly,  to  be  economic  and  withholding  in  similes,  figures,  &c. 
They  will  all  find  their  place,  sooner  or  later,  each  as  the  lumi- 
nary of  a  sphere  of  its  own.  There  can  be  no  galaxy  in  poetry, 
because  it  is  language, — ergo  processive, — ergo  every  the  smallest 
star  must  be  seen  singly. 

There  are  not  five  metrists  in  the  kingdom,  whose  works  are 
known  by  me,  to  whom  I  could  have  held  myself  allowed  to 
have  spoken  so  plainly.  But  B.  C.  is  a  man  of  genius,  and  it 
depends  on  himself— (competence  protecting  him  from  gnawing 
or  distracting  cares) — to  become  a  rightful  poet, — that  is,  a  great 
man. 

Oh !  for  such  a  man  worldly  prudence  is  transfigured  into  the 
highest  spiritual  duty !  How  generous  is  self-interest  in  him, 
whose  true  self  is  all  that  is  good  and  hopeful  in  all  ages,  as  far 
as  the  language  of  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  and  Milton  shall  become 
the  mother-tongue  ! 

A  map  of  the  road  to  Paradise,  drawn  in  purgatory,  on  the 
confines  of  Hell,  by  S.  T.  C.     July  30,  1819. 

-ON  THE  MODE  OF  STUDYING  KANT. 

EXTRACT  FROM  A  LETTER.  OF  MR.  COLERIDGE  TO  J.  GOODEN,  ESQ.* 

Accept  my  thanks  for  the  rules  of  the  harmony.  I  perceive 
that  the  members  are  chiefly  merchants ;  but  yet  it  were  to  be 
wished,  that  such  an  enlargement  of  the  society  could  be  brought 
about  as,  retaining  all  its  present  purposes,  might  add  to  them 
the  ground-work  of  a  library  of  northern  literature,  and  by  bring- 
ing together  the  many  gentlemen  who  are  attached  to  it  to  be  the 
means  of  eventually  making  both  countries  better  acquainted  with 
the  valuable  part  of  each  other  ;  especially,  the  English  with  the 
German,  for  our  most  sensible  men  look  at  the  German  Muses 
through  a  film  of  prejudice  and  utter  misconception. 

With  regard  to  philosophy,  there  are  half  a  dozen  things,  good 
and  bad,  that  in  this  country  are  so  nicknamed,  but  in  the  only 
accurate  sense  of  the  term,  there  neither  are,  have  been,  or  ever 
will  be  but  two  essentially  different  schools  of  philosophy,  the 
Platonic,  and  the  Aristotelian.     To  the  latter  but  with  a  some- 

*  This  letter  and  the  following  notes  on  Jean  Paul  were  communicated 
by  Mr.  H.  C.  Robinson.— S.  C. 


400  ON  THE  MODE   OF   STUDYING  KANT. 

what  nearer  approach  to  the  Platonic,  Emanuel  Kant  belonged ; 
to  the  former  Bacon  and  Leibnitz,  and,  in  his  riper  and  better 
years,  Berkeley.  And  to  this  I  profess  myself  an  adherent — nihil 
novum,  vel  inauditum  audemus ;  though,  as  every  man  has  a 
face  of  his  own,  without  being  more  or  less  than  a  man,  so  is  every 
true  philosopher  an  original,  without  ceasing  to  be  an  inmate  of 
Academus  or  of  the  Lyceum.  But  as  to  caution,  I  will  just  tell 
you  how  I  proceeded  myself  twenty  years  and  more  ago,  when  I 
first  felt  a  curiosity  about  Kant,  and  was  fully  aware  that  to  mas- 
ter his  meaning,  as  a  system,  would  be  a  work  of  great  labor  and 
long  time.  First,  I  asked  myself,  have  I  the  labor  and  the  time 
in  my  power  ?  Secondly,  if  so,  and  if  it  would  be  of  adequate 
importance  to  me  if  true,  by  what  means  can  I  arrive  at  a  ra- 
tional presumption  for  or  against  ?  I  inquired  after  all  the  more 
popular  writings  of  Kant — read  them  with  delight.  I  then  read 
the  Prefaces  of  several  of  his  systematic  works,  as  the  Prolego- 
mena, &c.  Here  too  every  part,  I  understood,  and  that  was 
nearly  the  whole,  was  replete  with  sound  and  plain,  though  bold 
and  to  me  novel  truths  ;  and  I  followed  Socrates'  adage  respecting 
Heraclitus  :  all  I  understand  is  excellent,  and  I  am  bound  to  pre- 
sume that  the  rest  is  at  least  worth  the  trouble  of  trying  whether 
it  be  not  equally  so.  In  other  words,  until  I  understand  a  wri- 
ter's ignorance,  I  presume  myself  ignorant  of  his  understanding. 
Permit  me  to  refer  you  to  a  chapter  on  this  subject  in  my  Literary 
Life.^ 

Yet  I  by  no  means  recommend  to  you  an  extension  of  your 
philosophic  researches  beyond  Kant.  In  him  is  contained  all 
that  can  be  learned,  and  as  to  the  results,  you  have  a  firm  faith 
in  God,  the  responsible  Will  of  Man  and  Immortality;  and  Kant 
will  demonstrate  to  you,  that  this  faith  is  acquiesced  in,  indeed, 
nay,  confirmed  by  the  Reason  and  Understanding,  but  grounded 
on  Postulates  authorized  and  substantiated  solely  by  the  Moral 
Being.  They  are  likewise  mine :  and  whether  the  Ideas  are 
regulative  only,  as  Aristotle  and  Kant  teach,  or  constitutive  and 
actual,  as  Pythagoras  and  Plato,  is  of  living  interest  to  the  phi- 
losopher by  profession  alone.  Both  systems  are  equally  true,  if 
only  the  former  abstain  from  denying  universally  what  is  denied 
individually.  He,  for  whom  Ideas  are  constitutive,  will  in  effect 
be  a  Platonist ;  and  in  those  for  whom  they  are  regulative  only, 
*  Biographia  Literaria,  chap.  xii.  p.  322. — S.  C. 


NOTES  ON  THE  PALINGENESIEN  OF  JEAN  PAUL.  491 

Platonism  is  but  a  hollow  affectation.  Dryden  could  not  have 
been  a  Platonist :  Shakspeare,  Milton,  Dante,  Michel  Angelo  and 
Rafael  could  not  have  been  other  than  Platonists.  Lord  Bacon, 
who  never  read  Plato's  works,  taught  pure  Platonism  in  his  great 
work,  the  Novum  Organum,  and  abuses  his  divine  predecessor 
for  fantastic  nonsense,  which  he  had  been  the  first  to  explode. 
Accept  my  best  respects,  &c. 

S.  T.  COLERIDGE. 
14  Jan.  1814.    Highgate. 


NOTES  ON  THE  PALINGENESIEN  OF  JEAN  PAUL. 

WRITTEN  IN  THE  BLANK  LEAF  AT  THE  BEGINNING. 

-S  ist  zu  merken,  dass  die  Sprache  in  diesem  Buch  nicht  sey 


wie  in  gewohnlich  Bette,  darin  der  Gedankenstrom  ordentlich 
and  ehrbar  hinstromt,  sondern  wie  ein  Verwiistung  in  Damm 
and  Deichen.* 
Preface  p.  xxxi. 

Two  Revolutions,  the  Gallican,  which  sacrifices  the  individuals  to  the 
Idea  or  to  the  State,  and  in  time  of  need,  even  the  latter  themselves ; — and 
the  Kantian-Moralist  (Kantisch-Moralische),  which  abandons  the  affection  of 
human  Love  altogether,  because  it  can  so  little  be  described  as  merit ;  these 
draw  and  station  us  forlorn  human  creatures  ever  further  and  more  lone- 
Bomely  one  from  another,  each  on  a  frosty  uninhabited  island :  nay,  the  Gal- 
lican, which  excites  and  arms  feelings  against  feelings,  does  it  less  than  the 
Ci  itical,  which  teaches  us  to  disarm  and  to  dispense  with  them  altogether ; 
and  which  neither  allows  Love  to  pass  for  the  spring  of  virtue,  nor  virtue 
for  the  source  of  Love.f — Transl. 

But  surely  Kant's  aim  was  not  to  give  a  full  Sittenlehre,  or 

*  It  is  observable  that  the  language  in  this  book  is  not  as  in  an  ordinary 
channel,  wherein  the  stream  of  thought  flows  on  in  a  seemly  and  regular 
manner,  but  like  a  violent  flood  rushing  against  dyke  and  mole. 

f  Zwei  Revoluzionen,  die  gallische,  welche  der  Idee  oder  dem  Staate  die 
Individuen,  and  im  Nothsal  diesen  selber  opfert,  und  die  kantisch-moralische, 
welche  den  Affekt  der  Menschenliebe  liegen  lasset,  weil  er  so  weuig  wie 
Yerdienste  geboten  werden  kan,  diese  ziehen  und  stellen  uns  verlassene 
Menschen  immer  weiter  und  einsamer  aus  cinander,  jeden  nur  auf  ein  fros- 
tiges  unbewohntes  Eiland ;  ja  die  gallische,  die  nur  Gefiihle  gegen  Gefiihle 
bewafnet  und  aufhezt,  thut  es  weniger  als  die  kritische,  die  sie  entwafnen 
und  entbehren  lehrt,  und  die  weder  die  Liebe  als  Quelle  der  Tugend  nocb 
diese  als  Quelle  von  jener  gelten  lassen  kan. 


402  LETTER   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE. 

system  of  practical  material  morality,  but  the  a  priori  form  — 
Ethice  formalis :  which  was  then  a  most  necessary  work,  and 
the  only  mode  of  quelling  at  once  both  Necessitarians  and  Merit- 
mongers,  and  the  idol  common  to  both,  Eudaemonism.  If  his  fol- 
lowers have  stood  still  in  lazy  adoration,  instead  of  following  up 
the  road  thus  opened  out  to  them,  it  is  their  fault,  not  Kant's. 

S.  T.  C. 


FROM  BLACKWOOD'S  EDINBURGH  MAGAZINE,  Oct.  1821. 

LETTER   FROM    MR.   COLERIDGE. 

Dear  Sir, — In  the  third  letter  (in  the  little  parcel)  which  I 
have  headed  with  your  name,  you  will  find  my  reasons  for  wish- 
ing these  five  letters,  and  a  sixth,  which  will  follow  in  my  next, 
on  the  plan  and  code  of  a  Magazine,  which  should  unite  the 
utile  and  dulce,  to  appear  in  the  first  instance.  My  next  will 
consist  of  very  different  articles,  apparently;  namely,  the  First 
Book  of  my  True  History  from  Fairy  Land,  or  the  World  Without, 
and  the  World  Within.  2.  The  commencement  of  the  Annals 
and  Philosophy  of  Superstition  ;  for  the  completion  of  which  I  am' 
waiting  only  for  a  very  curious  folio,  in  Mr.  **********'s  p0S. 
session.  3.  The  life  of  Holty,  a  German  poet,  of  true  genius,  who 
died  in  early  manhood ;  with  specimens  of  his  poems,  translated, 
or  freely  imitated  in  English  verse.  It  would  have  been  more  in 
the  mode  to  have  addressed  myself  to  the  Editor,  but  I  could  not 
give  up  this  one  opportunity  of  assuring  you  that  I  am,  my  dear 
Sir, 

With  every  friendly  wish,  your  obliged, 

S.  T.  Coleridge. 

Mr.  Blackwood. 


LITER AEY   CORRESPONDENCE.  403 


SELECTION  FROM  MR.  COLERIDGE'S   LITERARY  CORRESPON- 
DENCE WITH  FRIENDS,  AND  MEN  OF  LETTERS. 

No.  I. 

LETTER  I.     From  a  Professional  Friend 

My  Dear  and  Honored  Sir, — I  was  much  struck  with  your 
Excerpta  from  Porta,  Eckartshausen,  and  others,  as  to  the  effect 
of  the  ceremonial  drinks  and  unguents,  on  the  (female)  practition- 
ers of  the  black  arts,  whose  witchcraft  you  believe  to  have  con- 
sisted in  the  unhappy  craft  of  bewitching  themselves.  I  at  least 
know  of  no  reason,  why  to  these  toxications  (especially  when 
taken  through  the  skin,  and  to  the  cataleptic  state  induced  by 
them),  we  should  not  attribute  the  poor  wretches'  own  belief  of 
their  guilt.  I  can  conceive,  indeed,  of  no  other  mode  of  account- 
ing— I  do  not  say  for  their  suspicious  last  dying  avowals  at  the 
stake ;  but — for  their  private  and  voluntary  confessions  on  their 
death-beds,  which  made  a  convert  of  your  old  favorite,  Sir  T. 
Brown.  Perhaps  my  professional  pursuits,  and  medical  studies, 
may  have  predisposed  me  to  be  interested ;  but  my  mind  has 
been  in  an  eddy  ever  since  I  left  you.  The  connections  of  the 
subject  with  classical  and  with  druidical  superstitions,  pointed 
out  by  you — the  Circeia  pocula — the  herbal  spells  of  the  Haxse, 
or  Druidesses — the  somniloquism  of  the  prophetesses,  under  the 
coercion  of  the  Scandinavian  enchanters — the  dependence  of  the 
Greek  oracles  on  mineral  waters,  and  stupefying  vapors  from  the 
earth,  as  stated  by  Plutarch,  and  more  than  once  alluded  to  by 
Euripides — the  vast  spread  of  the  same,  or  similar  usages,  from 
Greenland  even  to  the  southernmost  point  of  America ; — you  sent 
me  home  with  enough  to  think  of! — But,  more  than  all,  I  was 
struck  and  interested  with  your  concluding  remark,  that  these, 
and  most  other  superstitions,  were,  in  your  belief,  but  the  cadaver 
et  putrimenta  of  a  defunct  natural  philosophy. — Why  not 
rather  the  imperfect  rudiments  ?  I  asked.  You  promised  me 
your  reasons,  and  a  fuller  explanation.  But  let  me  speak  out 
my  whole  wish ;  and  call  on  you  to  redeem  the  pledges  you  gave, 
so  long  back  as  October,  1809,  that  you  would  devote  a  series  of 
papers  to  the  subject  of  Dreams,  Visions,  Presentations,  Ghosts, 


404  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

Witchcraft,  Cures  by  sympathy,  in  which  you  would  select  aiU 
explain  the  most  interesting  and  best  attested  facts  that  have 
come  to  your  knowledge  from  books  or  personal  testimony. 

You  can  scarcely  conceive  how  deep  an  interest  I  attach  to 
this  request ;  nor  how  many,  beside  myself,  in  the  circle  of  my 
own  acquaintance,  have  the  same  feeling.  Indeed,  my  dear  Sir! 
when  I  reflect,  that  there  is  scarcely  a  chapter  of  history  in  which 
superstition  of  some  kind  or  other  does  not  form  or  supply  a  por- 
tion of  its  contents,  I  look  forward,  with  unquiet  anticipation,  to 
the  power  of  explaining  the  more  frequent  and  best  attested  nar- 
rations, at  least  without  the  necessity  of  having  recourse  to  the 
supposition  of  downright  tricks  and  lying,  on  one  side,  or  to  the 
Devil  and  his  imps  on  the  other.    *    *    *    * 

Your  obliged  Pupil,  and  affectionate  Friend, 

J.  L . 

P.  S. — Dr.  L.  of  the  Museum,  is  quite  of  your  opinion,  that 
little  or  nothing  of  importance  to  the  philosophic  naturalist  can 
result  from  Comparative  Anatomy  on  Cuvier's  plan  ;  and  that 
its  best  trophies  will  be  but  lifeless  skeletons,  till  it  is  studied  in 
combination  with  a  Comparative  Physiology.  But  you  ought 
yourself  to  vindicate  the  priority  of  your  claim.  But  I  fear,  dear 
C,  that  Sic  Vos,  non  Vobis  Avas  made  for  your  motto  throughout 
life. 

LETTER  II.     In  answer  to  the  above. 

Well,  my  dear  pupil  and  fellow-student  !  I  am  willing  to 
make  the  attempt.  If  the  majority  of  my  readers  had  but  the 
same  personal  knowledge  of  me  as  you  have,  I  should  sit  down 
to  the  work  with  good  cheer.  But  this  is  out  of  the  question. 
Let  me,  however,  suppose  you  for  the  moment,  as  an  average 
reader — address  you  as  such,  and  attribute  to  you  feelings  and 

language  in  character. — Do  not  mistake  me,  my  dear  L . 

Not  even  for  a  moment,  nor  under  the  pretext  of  mons  a  non 
movenclo,  would  I  contemplate  in  connection  with  your  name 
"■  id  genus  lectorum,  qui  meliores  obtrectare  malint  quam  imitari : 
et  quorum  similitudinem  desperent,  eorundem  affectent  simul 
tatem — scilicet  uti  qui  suo  nomine  obscuri  sunt,meoinnotescant."^ 

*  The  passage,  which  can  not  fail  to  remind  you  of  H and  his  set, 

is  from  Apuleius's  Lib.  Floridorum — the  two  books  of  which,  by  c-he  bye. 


LITERARY    CORRESPONDENCE.  405 

The  readers  I  have  in  view,  are  of  that  class  who  with  a  sincere, 
though  not  very  strong  desire,  of  acquiring  knowledge,  have  taken 
it  for  granted,  that  all  knowledge  of  any  value  respecting  the 
mind  is  either  to  be  found  in  three  or  four  books,  the  eldest  not 
a  hundred  years  old,  or  may  be  conveniently  taught  without  any 
other  terms  or  previous  explanations  than  these  works  have 
already  rendered  familiar  among  men  of  education. 

Well,  friendly  reader !  as  the  problem  of  things  little  less  (it 
seems  to  you)  than  impossible,  yet  strongly  and  numerously  at- 
tested by  evidence  which  it  seems  impossible  to  discredit,  has  in- 
terested you,  I  am  willing  to  attempt  the  solution.  But  then  it 
must  be  under  certain  conditions.  I  must  be  able  to  hope,  I 
must  have  sufficient  grounds  for  hoping,  that  I  shall  be  under- 
stood, or  rather  that  I  shall  be  allowed  to  make  myself  understood. 
And  as  I  am  gifted  with  no  magnetic  power  of  throwing  my 
reader  into  the  state  of  clear-seeing  (clairvoyance)  or  luminous 
vision  ;  as  I  have  not  the  secret  of  enabling  him  to  read  with  the 
pit  of  his  stomach,  or  with  his  finger-ends,  nor  of  calling  into  act 
"  the  cuticular  faculty,"  dormant  at  the  tip  of  his  nose  ;  but  must 
rely  on  words — I  can  not.  form  the,  hope  rationally,  unless  the 
reader  will  have  patience  enough  to  master  the  sense  in  which  I 
use  them. 

But  why  employ  words  that  need  explanation  ?  And  might 
I  not  ask  in  my  turn,  would  you,  gentle  reader  !  put  the  same 
question  to  Sir  Edward  Smith,  or  any  other  member  of  the  Liu- 
inean  Society,  to  whom  you  had  applied  for  instruction  in  Bot- 
any ?  And  yet  he  would  require  of  you  that  you  should  attend 
to  a  score  of  technical  terms,  and  make  yourself  master  of  the 
sense  of  each,  in  order  to  your  understanding  the  distinctive  char- 
acters of  a  grass,  a  mushroom,  and  a  lichen  !  Now  the  psychol- 
ogist, or  speculative  philosopher,  will  be  content  with  you,  if  you  will 
impose  on  yourself  the  trouble  of  understanding  and  remembering 
one  of  the  number,  in  order  to  understand  your  own  nature.  But 
I  will  meet  your  question  direct.  You  ask  me,  why  I  use  words 
that  need  explanation  ?'■  Because  (I  reply)  on  this  subject  there 
are  no  others  !  Because  the  darkness  and  the  main  difficulties 
that  attend  it,  ai :.  owing  to  the  vagueness  and  ambiguity  of  the 

seem  to  have  been  transcribed  from  his  common-place-book  of  Good  Things, 
happy  phrases,  (fee.,  that  he  had  not  had  an  opportunity  of  bringing  in  in 
his  set  writings. 


106  SELECTION  FROM   ME.    COLERIDGE'S 

words  in  common  use  ;  and  which  preclude  all  explanation  fo* 
him  who  has  resolved  that  none  is  required.  Because  there  is 
already  a  falsity  in  the  very  phrases,  "  words  in  common  use  ;" 
"  the  language  of  common  sense."  "Words  of  most  frequent  use 
they  may  be,  common  they  are  not ;  but  the  language  of  the 
market,  and  as  such,  expressing  degrees  only,  and  therefore  in- 
competent to  the  purpose  wherever  it  becomes  necessary  to  des- 
ignate the  kind  independent  of  all  degree.  The  philosopher  may, 
and  often  does,  employ  the  same  words  as  in  the  market ;  but 
does  this  supersede  the  necessity  of  a  previous  explanation  ?  As 
I  referred  you  before  to  the  botanist,  so  now  to  the  chemist. 
Light,  heat,  charcoal,  are  every  man's  words.  But  fixed  or  in- 
visible light  ?  The  frozen  heat  ?  Charcoal  in  its  simplest  form 
as  diamond,  or  as  black-lead  ?  "Will  a  stranger  to  chemistry  be 
worse  off,  would  the  chemist's  language  be  less  likely  to  be  under- 
stood by  his  using  different  words  for  distinct  meanings,  as  car- 
bon, caloric,  and  the  like  ? 

But  the  case  is  stronger.  The  chemist  is  compelled  to  make 
words,  in  order  to  prevent  or  remove  some  error  connected  with 
the  common  word  ;  and  this  too  an  error,  the  continuance  of 
which  was  incompatible  with  the  first  principles  and  elementary 
truths  of  the  science  he  is  to  teach.  You  must  submit  to  regard 
yourself  ignorant  even  of  the  words,  air  and  water  ;  and  will  find, 
that  they  are  not  chemically  intelligible  without  the  terms, 
oxygen,  nitrogen,  hydrogen,  or  others  equivalent.  Now  it  is  even 
so  with  the  knowledge,  which  you  would  have  me  to  communi- 
cate. There  are  certain  prejudices  of  the  common,  i.  e.  of  the 
average  sense  of  men,  the  exposure  of  which  is  the  first  step,  the 
indispensable  preliminary,  of  all  rational  psychology  :  and  these 
can  not  be  exposed  but  by  selecting  and  adhering  to  some  one 
word,  in  which  we  may  be  able  to  trace  the  growth  and  modifi- 
cations of  the  opinion  or  belief  conveyed  in  this,  or  similar  words, 
not  by  any  revolution  or  positive  change  of  the  original  sense, 
but  by  the  transfer  of  this  sense  and  the  difference  in  the  appli- 
cation. 

Where  there  is  but  one  word  for  two  or  more  diverse  or  dis- 
parate meanings  in  a  language  (or  though  there  should  be  several, 
yet  if  perfect  synonymes,  they  count  but  for  0113  word),  the  lan- 
guage is  so  far  defective.  And  this  is  a  defect  of  frequent  occur* 
rence  in  all  languages,  prior  to  the  cultivation  of  science,  logic; 


LITERARY  CORRESPONDENCE.  407 

and  philology,  especially  of  the  two  latter  :  and  among  a  free, 
lively,  and  ingenious  people,  such  as  the  Greeks  were,  sophistry 
and  the  influence  of  sophists  are  the  inevitable  result.  To  check 
this  evil  by  striking  at  its  root  in  the  ambiguity  of  words,  Plato 
wrote  the  greater  part  of  his  published  works,  which  do  not  so 
much  contain  his  own  system  of  philosophy,  as  the  negative  con- 
ditions of  reasoning  aright  on  any  system.  And  yet  more  obvi- 
ously is  it  the  case  with  the  Metaphysics,  Analytics,  &c.  of  Ar- 
istotle, which  have  been  well  described  by  Lambert  as  a  dictionary 
of  general  terms,  the  process  throughout  being,  first,  to  discover 
and  establish  definite  meanings,  and  then  to  appropriate  to  each 
a  several  word.  The  sciences  will  take  care,  each  of  its  own 
nomenclature  ;  but  the  interests  of  the  language  at  large  fall 
under  the  special  guardianship  of  logic  and  rational  psychology. 
Where  these  have  fallen  into  neglect  or  disrepute,  from  exclusive 
pursuit  of  wealth,  excess  of  the  commercial  spirit,  or  whatever 
other  cause  disposes  men  in  general  to  attach  an  exclusive  value 
to  immediate  and  palpable  utility,  the  dictionary  may  swell,  but 
the  language  will  decline.  Few  are  the  books  published  within 
the  last  fifty  years,  that  would  not  supply  their  quota  of  proofs, 
that  so  it  is  with  our  own  mother  English.  The  bricks  and 
stones  are  in  abundance,  but  the  cement  none  or  naught.  That 
which  is  indeed  the  common  language  exists  everywhere  as  the 
menstruum,  and  nowhere  as  the  whole — See  Biograjphia  Lit- 
eraria* — while  the  language  complimented  with  this  name,  is, 
as  I  have  already  said,  in  fact  the  language  of  the  market. 
Every  science,  every  trade,  has  its  technical  nomenclature  ;  every 
folly  has  its  fancy-words  ;  every  vice  its  own  slang — and  is  the 
science  of  humanity  to  be  the  one  exception  ?  Is  philosophy  to 
work  without  tools  ?  to  have  no  straw  wherewith  to  make  the 
bricks  for  her  mansion-house,  but  what  she  may  pick  up  on  the 
high-road,  or  steal,  with  all  its  impurities  and  sophistications, 
from  the  litter  of  the  cattle-market  ? 

For  the  present,  however,  my  demands  on  your  patience  are 
very  limited. — If  as  the  price  of  much  entertainment  to  follow, 
and  I  trust  of  something  besides  of  less  transitory  interest,  you 
will  fairly  attend  to  the  history  of  two  scholastic  terms,  object 
*and  subject,  with  their  derivatives  ;  you  shall  have  my  promise 
that  I  will  not  on  any  future  occasion  ask  you  to  be  attentive^ 
*  P.  409.— S.  0. 


40d  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

without  trying  not  to  be  myself  dull.-  That  it  may  cost  you  no 
more  trouble  than  necessary,  I  have  brought  it  under  the  eye  in 
numbered  paragraphs,  with  scholia  or  commentary  to  such  as 
seemed  to  require  it. 

Yours  most  affectionately, 

S.  T.  COLERIDGE. 


ON  THE  PHILOSOPHIC  IMPORT  OF  THE   WORDS,  OBJECT 
AND  SUBJECT. 

§  1. 
Existence  is  a  simple  intuition,  underived  and  indecomponible. 
It  is  no  idea,  no  particular  form,  much  less  any  determination  or 
modification  of  the  possible  :  it  is  nothing  that  can  be  educed 
from  the  logical  conception  of  a  thing,  as  its  predicate  :  it  is  no 
property  of  a  thing,  but  its  reality  itself ;  or,  as  the  Latin  would 
more  conveniently  express  it — Nulla  rei  proprietas  est,  sed  ipsa 
ejus  realitas. 

SCHOLIUM. 

Herein  lies  the  sophism  in  Des  Cartes'  celebrated  demonstra- 
tion of  the  existence  of  the  Supreme  Being  irom  the  idea.  In 
the  idea  of  God  are  contained  all  attributes  that  belong  to  the 
perfection  of  a  being  :  but  existence  is  such  :  therefore,  God's  ex- 
istence is  contained  in  the  idea  of  God.  To  this  it  is  a  sufficient 
answer,  that  existence  is  not  an  attribute.  It  might  be  shown 
too,  from  the  barrenness  of  the  demonstration,  by  identifying  the 
deduction  with  the  premise,  i.  e.  for  reducing  the  minor  or  term 
included  to  a  mere  repetition  of  the  major  or  term  including* 
For  in  fact  the  syllogism  ought  to  stand  thus  :  the  idea  of  God 
comprises  the  idea  of  all  attributes  that  belong  to  perfection ;  but 
the  idea  of  existence  is  such  :  therefore  the-  idea  of  his  existence 
is  included  in  the  idea  of  God. — Now,  existence  is  no  idea,  but  a 
fact :  or,  though  we  had  an  idea  of  existence,  still  the  proof  of  a 
correspondence  to  a  reality  would  be  wanting,  i.  e.  the  very  point 
would  be  wanting  which  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  demonstration 
to  supply.  Still  the  idea  of  the  fact  is  not  the  fact  itself.  Be- 
sides, the  term,  idea,  is  here  improperly  substituted  for  the  mere* 
supposition  of  a  logical  subject,  necessarily  presumed  in  order  to 
the  conceivableness  (cogitabililas)  of  any  qualities,  properties,  or 


LITERARY  CORRESPONDENCE.  409 

attributes,  But  this  is.  a  mere  ens  logicum  (vel  etiarn  gram* 
maticum),  the  result  of  the  thinker's  own  unity  of  consciousness, 
and  no  less  contained  in  the  conception  of  a  plant  or  of  a  chimera, 
than  in  the  idea  of  the  Supreme  Being.  If  Des  Cartes  could 
have  proved,  that  his  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being  is  universal  and 
necessary,  and  that  the  conviction  of  a  reality  perfectly  coincident 
with  the  idea  is  equally  universal  and  inevitable  ;  and  that  these 
were  in  truth  but  one  and  the  same  act  or  intuition,  unique,  and 
without  analogy,  though,  from  the  inadequateness  of  our  minds, 
from  the  mechanism  of  thought,  and  the  structure  of  language, 
we  are  compelled  to  express  it  dividually,  as  consisting  of  two 
correlative  terms — this  would  have  been  something.  But  then 
it  must  be  entitled  a  statement,  not  a  demonstration — the  neces- 
sity of  which  it  would  supersede.  And  something  like  this  may 
perhaps  be  found  true,  where  the  reasoning  powers  are  developed 
and  duly  exerted  ;  but  would,  I  fear,  do  little  towards  settling  the 
dispute  between  the  religious  Theist,  and  the  speculative  Atheist 
or  Pantheist,  whether  this  be  all,  or  whether  it  is  even  what  we 
mean,  and  are  bound  to  mean,  by  the  word  God.  The  old  con- 
troversy would  be  started,  what  are  the  possible  perfections  of  an 
Infinite  Being — in  other  words,  what  the  legitimate  sense  is  of 
the  term,  infinite,  as  applied  to  Deity,  and  what  is,  or  is  not  com 
patible  with  that  sense. 


I  think,  and  while  thinking,  I  am  conscious  of  certain  work 
ings  or  movements,  as  acts  or  activities  of  my  being,  and  feel 
myself  as  the  power  in  which  they  originate.  I  feel  myself 
working;  and  the  sense  or  feeling  of  this  activity  constitutes  the 
sense  and  feeling  of  existence,  i.  e.  of  my  actual  being. 

SCHOLIUM. 

Movements,  motions,  taken  metaphorically,  without  relation  to 
space  or  place.  Kivi\oeig  fir)  tcajoc  xbnov  •  al &aneg  xivrjaeig,  of 
Aristotle. 

§3. 

In  these  workings,  however,  I  distinguish  a  difference.  In 
some  I  feel  myself  as  the  cause  and  proper  agent,  and  the  move- 
ments themselves  as  the  work  of  my  own  power.     In  others,  I 

VOL. IV,  S 


4-10  SELECTION  FKOM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

feel  these  movements  as  my  own  activity  ;  but  not  as  my  own 
acts.  The  first  we  call  the  active  or  positive  state  of  our  exist- 
ence :  the  second,  the  passive  or  negative  state.  The  active 
power,  nevertheless,  is  felt  in  both  equally.  But  in  the  first  I  feel 
it  as  the  cause  acting,  in  the  second,  as  the  condition,  without 
which  I  could  not  be  acted  on. 

SCHOLIUM. 

It  is  a  truth  of  highest  importance,  that  agere  et  pati  are  not 
different  kinds,  but  the  same  kind  in  different  relations.  And 
this  not  only  in  consequence  of  an  immediate  re-action,  but  the 
act  of  receiving  is  no  less  truly  an  act,  than  the  act  of  influencing. 
Thus,  the  lungs  act  in  being  stimulated  by  the  air,  as  truly  as  in 
the  act  of  breathing,  to  which  they  were  stimulated.  The  Greek 
verbal  termination,  o),  happily  illustrates  this.  I7oi&,  ttquttoj, 
7iu(jxa>>  in  philosophical  grammar,  are  all  three  verbs  active  ;  bu'„ 
the  first  is  the  active-transitive,  in  which  the  agency  passes  forth 
out  of  the  agent  into  another.  Tl  noieTq  ;  what  are  you  doing  ? 
The  second  is  the  8LCtive-int?-a?isitive.  TL  nguireig ;  how  do 
you  do  ?  or  how  are  you  ?  The  third  is  the  active-passive,  or 
more  appropriately  the  &c\\.ve-patient,  the  verb  recipient  or  re- 
ceptive, il  nacr/eig  ;  what  ails  you  ?  Or,  to  take  another  idiom  of 
our  language,  that  most  livelily  expresses  the  co-presence  of  an 
agent,  an  agency  distinct  and  alien  from  our  own,  What  is  the 
matter  ivith  you  ?  It  would  carry  us  too  far  to  explain  the  na- 
ture of  verbs  passive,  as  so  called  in  technical  grammar.  Suffice, 
that  this  class  originated  in  the  same  causes,  as  led  men  to  make 
the  division  of  substances  into  living  and  dead — a  division  psy- 
chologically necessary,  but  of  doubtful  philosophical  validity. 

§4. 

With  the  workings  and  movements,  which  I  refer  to  myself 
and  my  own  agency,  there  alternate — say  rather,  I  find  myself 
alternately  conscious  of,  forms  (=  Impressions,  images,  or  better 
or  less  figurative  and  hypothetical,  presences,  presentations),  and 
of  states  or  modes,  which  not  feeling  as  the  work  or  effect  of  my 
own  power  I  refer  to  a  power  other  than  me,  i.  e.  (in  the  lan- 
guage derived  from  my  sense  of  sight)  without  me.  And  this  ia 
the  feeling,  I  have,  of  the  existence  of  outward  things. 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  411 

SCHOLIUM. 

Ill  this  superinduction  of  the  sense  of  outness,  on  the  feeling  of 
the  actual  arises  our  notion  of  the  real  and  reality.  But  as  I 
can  not  but  reflect,  that  as  the  other  is  to  me,  so  I  must  he  to  the 
other,  the  terms  real  and  actual,  soon  become  confounded  and  in- 
terchangeable, or  only  discriminated  in  the  gold  scales  of  meta- 
physics. 

\  5. 

Since  both  then,  the  feeling  of  my  own  existence  and  the  feel- 
ing of  the  existence  of  things  without,  are  but  this  sense  of  an 
acting  and  working — it  is  clear  that  to  exist  is  the  same  as  to  act 
or  work  (Quantum  operor,  tantum  sum) ;  that  whatever  exists, 
works  (=  is  in  action  ;  actually  is  ;  is  in  deed),  that  not  to 
work,  as  agent  or  patient,  is  not  to  exist ;  and  lastly,  that  patience 
(=  vis  patie?idi)  and  the  reaction  that  is  its  co-instantaneous 
consequent,  is  the  same  activity  in  opposite  and  alternating  re- 
lations. 

§6. 

That  which  is  inferred  in  those  acts  and  workings,  the  feeling 
of  which  is  one  writh  the  feeling  of  our  own  existence,  or  inferred 
from  those  which  we  refer  to  an  agency  distinct  from  our  own, 
but  in  both  instances  is  inferred,  is  the  subject,  i.  e.  that  which 
does  not  appear,  but  lies  tinder  (quod  jacet  subter)  the  ap- 
pearance. 

k  7. 

But  in  the  first  instance,  that  namely  which  is  inferred  in  its 
effects,  and  of  course  therefore  seZ/'-inferrecl,  the  subject  is  a  mind, 
i.  e.  that  which  knoivs  itself,  and  may  be  inferred  by  others  ;  but 
which  can  not  appear. 

§8. 

That,  in  or  from  which  the  subject  is  inferred,  is  the  object, 
id  quod  jacet  ob  oculos,  that  which  lies  before  us,  that  which  lies 
straight  opposite. 

SCHOLIUM. 

The  terms  used  in  psychology,  logic,  &c.  even  those  of  most 
frequent  occurrence  in  common  life,  are,  for  the  most  part,  of 
Latin  derivation  ;  and  not  only  so,  but  the  original  words,  such 
as  quantity,  quality,  subject,  object,  &c.  &c.  were  formed  in  the 


412  SELECTION  I  ROM  MR.  COLERIDGE'S 

schools  of  philosophy  for  scholastic  use,  and  in  correspondence  *ja 
Greek  technical  terms  of  the  same  meaning.  Etymology,  there- 
fore, is  little  else  than  indispensable  to  an  insight  into  the  true 
force,  and,  as  it  were,  freshness  of  the  words  in  question,  espe- 
cially of  those  that  have  passed  from  the  schools  into  the  market- 
place, from  the  medals  and  tokens  {av^ola)  of  the  philosophers' 
guild  or  company  into  the  current  coin  of  the  land.  But  the 
difference  between  a  man,  who  understands  them  according  to 
their  first  use,  and  seeks  to  restore  the  original  impress  and  super- 
scription, and  the  man  who  gives  and  takes  them  in  small  change, 
unweighed,  and  tried  only  by  the  sound,  may  be  illustrated  by 
imagining  the  different  points  of  view  in  which  the  same  cowry 
would  appear  to  a  scientific  conchologist,  and  to  a  chaffering 
negro.  This  use  of  etymology  may  be  exemplified  in  the  present 
case.  The  immediate  object  of  the  mind  is  always  and  exclu- 
sively the  workings  or  makings  above  stated  and  distinguished 
into  two  kinds,  §  2,  3,  and  4.  Where  the  object  consists  of  the  first 
kind,  in  which  the  subject  infers  its  own  existence,  and  which  it 
refers  to  its  own  agency,  and  identifies  with  itself  (feels  and  con- 
templates as  one  with  itself,  and  as  itself),  and  yet  without  con- 
founding the  inherent  distinction  between  subject  and  object,  the 
subject  witnesses  to  itself  that  it  is. a  mind,  i.  e.  a  subject-object, 
or  subject  that  becomes  an  object  to  itself. 

But  where  the  workings  or  makings  of  the  second  sort  are  the 
object,  from  objects  of  this  sort  we  always  infer  the  existence  of 
a  subject,  as  in  the  former  case.  But  we  infer  it  from  them, 
rather  than  in  them  ;  or  to  express  the  point  yet  more  clearly, 
we  infer  two  subjects.  In  the  object,  we  infer  our  own  existence 
and  subjectivity  ;  from  them  the  existence  of  a  subject,  not  our 
own,  and  to  this  we  refer  the  object,  as  to  its  proper  cause  and 
agent.  Again,  we  always  infer  a  correspondent  subject ;  but  not 
always  a  mind.  Whether  we  consider  this  other  subject  as 
another  mind,  is  determined  by  the  more  or  less  analogy  of  the 
objects  or  makings  of  the  second  class  to  those  of  the  first,  and 
not  seldom  depends  on  the  varying  degrees  of  our  attention  and 
previous  knowledge. 

Add  to  these  differences  the  modifying  influence  of  the  senses, 
the  sense  of  sight  more  particularly,  in  consequence  of  which  this 
subject  other  than  we,  is  presented  as  a  subject  out  of  us.  With 
the  sensuous  vividness  connected  with,  and  which  in  part  constir 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  413 

tutes,  this  outness  or  outwardness,  contrast  the  exceeding-  obscur- 
ity  and  dimness  in  the  conception  of  a  subject,  not  a  mind  ;  and 
reflect,  too,  that,  to  objects  of  the  first  kind,  we  can  not  attribute 
actual  or  separative  outwardness  ;  while,  in  cases  of  the  second 
kind,  we  are,  after  a  shorter  or  longer  time,  compelled  by  the  law 
of  association  to  transfer  this  outness  from  the  inferred  subject  to 
the  present  object.  Lastly,  reflect  that,  in  the  former  instance, 
the  object  is  identified  with  the  subject,  both  positively  by  the  act 
of  the  subject,  and  negatively  by  insusceptibility  of  outness  in  the 
object  ;  and  that  in  the  latter  the  very  contrary  takes  place  ; 
namely,  instead  of  the  object  being  identified  with  the  subject,  the 
subject  is  taken  up  and  confounded  in  the  object.  In  the  ordi- 
nary and  unreflecting  states,  therefore,  of  men's  minds,  it  could  not 
be  otherwise,  but  that,  in.  the  one  instance,  the  object  must  be 
lost,  and  indistinguishable  in  the  subject  ;  and  that,  in  the  other, 
the  subject  is  lost  and  forgotten  in  the  object,  to  which  a  neces- 
sary illusion  had  already  transferred  that  outness,  which,  in  its 
origin,  and  in  right  of  reason,  belongs  exclusively  to  the  subject, 
i.  e.  the  agent  ab  extra  inferred  from  the  object.  For  outness  is 
but  the  feeling  of  otherness  (alterity),  rendered  intuitive,  or  alter- 
ity  visually  represented.  Hence,  and  also  because  we  find  this 
outness  and  the  objects,  to  which,  though  they  are,  in  fact,  work- 
ings in  our  own  being,  we  transfer  it,  independent  of  our  will, 
and  apparently  common  to  other  minds,  we  learn  to  connect  there- 
with the  feeling  and  sense  of "reality  ;  and  the  objective  becomes 
synonymous  first  with  external,  then  with  real,  and  at  length  it 
was  employed  to  express  universal  and  permanent  validity,  free 
from  the  accidents  and  particular  constitution  of  individual 
intellects ;  nay,  when  taken  in  its  highest  and  absolute  sense, 
as  free  from  the  inherent  limits,  partial  perspective,  and  refract- 
ing media  of  the  human  mind  in  specie  {idola  tribus  of  Lord 
Bacon),  as  distinguished  from  mind  in  toto  genere.  In  direct  an- 
tithesis to  these  several  senses  of  the  term,  objective,  the  subjec- 
tive has  been  used  as  synonymous  with,  first,  inward ;  second, 
unreal  ;  and  third,  that  the  cause  and  seat  of  which  are  to  be 
referred  to  the  special  or  individual  peculiarity  of  the  percipients, 
mind,  organs,  or  relative  position.  Of  course,  the  meaning  of  the 
word  in  any  one  sentence  can  not  be  definitely  ascertained  but  by 
aid  of  the  context,  and  will  vary  with  the  immediate  purposes, 
and  previous  views  and  persuasions  of  the  writer.     Thus,  the 


414  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

egoist,  or  ultra-idealist,  affirms  all  objects  to  be  subjective  ;  the 
disciple  of  Malbranche,  or  of  Berkeley,  that  the  objective  subsists 
wholly  and  solely  in  the  universal  subject — God.  A  lady,  other- 
wise of  sound  mind,  was  so  affected  by  the  reported  death  of  her 
absent  husband,  that  every  night  at  the  same  hour  she  saw  a 
figure  at  the  foot  of  her  bed,  which  she  identified  with  him,  and 
minutely  described  to  the  bystanders,  during  the  continuance  of 
the  vision.  The  husband  returned,  and  previous  to  the  meeting, 
was  advised  to  appear  for  the  first  time  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  at 
the  precise  instant  that  the  spirit  used  to  appear,  and  in  the  dress 
described,  in  the  hope  that  the  original  might  scare  away  the 
counterfeit ;  or,  to  speak  more  seriously,  in  the  expectation  that 
the  impression  on  her  senses  from  without  would  meet  half-way, 
as  it  were,  and  repel,  or  take  the  place  of  the  image  from  the 
brain.  He  followed  the  advice  ;  but  the  moment  he  took  his 
position,  the  lady  shrieked  out,  "My  God  !  there  are  two!  and" 
— the  story  is  an  old  one,  and  you  may  end  it,  happily  or  tragic- 
ally, Tate's  King  Lear  or  Shakspeare's,  according  to  your  taste. 
I  have  brought  it  as  a  good  instance  of  the  force  of  the  two  words. 
You  and  I  would  hold  the  one  for  a  subjective  phenomenon,  the 
other  only  for  objective,  and  perhaps  illustrate  the  fact,  as  I  have 
already  done  elsewhere,  by  the  case  of  two  appearances  seen  in 
juxtaposition,  the  one  by  transmitted,  and  the  other  by  reflected 
light.  A  believer,  according  to  the  old  style,  whose  almanac  of 
faith  has  the  one  trifling  fault  of  Being  for  the  year  of  our  Lord 
one  thousand  four,  instead  of  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
twenty,  would  stickle  for  the  objectivity  of  both. * 

*  Nay,  and  relate  the  circumstance  for  the  very  purpose  of  proving  the 
reality  or  objective  truth  of  ghosts.  For  the  lady  saw  both !  But  if  this 
were  any.  proof  at  all,  it  would  at  best  be  a  superfluous  proof,  and  super- 
seded by  the  bed-posts,  &c.  For  if  she  saw  the  real  posts  at  the  same  time 
with  the  ghost,  that  stood  betwixt  them,  or  rather  if  she  continued  to  see 
the  ghost,  spite  of  the  sight  of  these,  how  should  she  not  see  the  real  hus- 
band ?  "What  was  to  make  the  difference  between  the  two  solids,  or  inter- 
cept the  rays  from  the  husband's  dressing-gown,  while  it  allowed  a  free 
passage  to  those  from  the  bed-curtain  ?  And  yet  I  first  heard  this  story 
from  one,  who,  though  professedly  an  unbeliever  in  this  branch  of  ancient 
Pneumatics  (which  stood,  however,  a  niche  higher,  I  suspect,  in  his  good 
opinion,  thau  Monboddo's  Ancient  Metaphysics),  adduced  it  as  a  something 
on  the  other  side  ! — A  puzzling  fact !  and  challenged  me  to  answer  it.  And 
this  too,  was  a  man  no  less  respectable  for  talents,  education,  and  active 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  415 

Andrew  Baxter,  again,  would  take  a  different  road  from  either. 
He  would  agree  with  us  in  calling  the  apparition  subjective,  and 
the  figure  of  the  husband  objective,  so  far  as  the  ubi  of  the  latter, 
and  its  position  extra  cerebrum,  or  in  outward  spaces,  was  in 
question.  But  he  would  differ  from  us  in  not  identifying  the 
agent  or  proper  cause  of  the  former — i.  e.  the  apparition — with 
the  subject  beholding.  The  shape  beheld  he  would  grant  to  be  a 
making  in  the  beholder's  own  brain  ;  but  the  facient,  he  would 
contend,  was  a  several  and  other  subject,  an  intrusive  supernum- 
erary or  squatter  in  the  same  tenement  or  workshop,  and  working 
with  the  same  tools  (ooyava)  as  the  subject,  their  rightful  owner 
and  original  occupant.  And  verily,  I  could  say  something  in  favor 
of  this  theory,  if  only  I  might  put  my  own  interpretation  on  it — 
having  been  hugely  pleased  with  the  notion  of  that  father  of  od- 
dities, and  oddest  of  the  fathers,  old  Tertullian,  who  considers 
these  soggetti  cattivi  (that  take  possession  of  other  folk's  kitchens, 
pantries,  sculleries,  and  water-closets,  causing  a  sad  to-do  at  head 
quarters)  as  creatures  of  the  same  order  with  the  Tsenise,  Lum- 
brici,  and  Ascarides — i.  e.  the  Bound,  Tape,  and  Thread- worms. 
Dsemones  hsec  sua  corpora  dilatant  et  contrahunt  ut  volunt,  sicut 
Lumbrici  et  alia  qucedam  insecta.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  dif- 
ference between  this  last  class  of  speculators  and  the  common  run 
of  ghost-fanciers,  will  scarcely  enable  us  to  exhibit  any  essential 
change  in  the  meaning  of  the  terms.  Both  must  be  described  as 
asserting  the  objective  nature  of  the  appearance,  and  in  both  the 
term  contains  the  sense  of  real  as  opposed  to  imaginary,  and  of 
outness  no  less  than  of  otherness,  the  difference  in  the  former 
being  only,  that,  in  the  vulgar  belief,  the  object  is  outward  in  re- 
lation to  the  whole  circle,  in  Baxter's  to  the  centre  only.     The 

sound  sense,  than  for  birth,  fortune,  and  official  rank.  So  strangely  are  the 
healthiest  judgments  suspended  by  any  out-of-the-way  combinations,  con- 
nected with  obscure  feelings  and  inferences,  when  they  happen  to  have 
occurred  within  the  narrator's  own  knowledge  ! — The  pith  of  this  argument 
in  support  of  ghost-objects,  stands  thus :  B  =  D :  C  —  D :  ergo,  B  =  C. 
The  D,  in  this  instance,  being  the  equal  visibility  of  the  figure,  and  of  its  rei  I 
duplicate,  a  logic  that  would  entitle  the  logician  to  dine  off  a  leg  of  mutton 
in  a  looking-glass,  and  to  set  his  little  ones  in  downright  earnest  to  hunt 
the  rabbits  on  the  wall  by  candle-light.  Things,  that  fall  under  the  same  de- 
finition, belong  to  the  same  class ;  and  visible,  yet  not  tangible,  is  the 
generic  character  of  reflections,  shadows,  and  ghosts  ;  and  apparitions,  their 
common,  and  most  certainly  their  proper,  Christian  name. 


416  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

one  places  the  ghost  without,  the  other  within,  the  line  of  cir 
cumference. 

I  have  only  to  add,  that  these  different  shades  of  meaning  forn 
no  valid  objection  to  the  revival  and  readoption  of  these  correla- 
tive terms  in  physiology^  and  mental  analytics,  as  expressing  the 
two  poles  of  all  consciousness,  in  their  most  general  ibrm  and 
highest  abstraction.  For  by  the  law  of  association,  the  same 
metaphorical  changes,  or  shiftings  and  ingraftings  of  the  primary 
sense,  must  inevitably  take  place  in  all  terms  of  greatest  compre- 
hensiveness and  simplicity.  Instead  of  subject  and  object,  put 
thought  and  thing.  You  will  find  these  liable  to  the  same  in- 
conveniences, with  the  additional  one  of  having  no  adjectives  or 
adverbs,  as  substitutes  for  objective,  subjective,  objectively,  sub- 
jectively. It  is  sufficient  that  no  heterogeneous  senses  are  con- 
founded under  the  same  term,  as  was  the  case  prior  to  Bishop 
Bramhall's  controversy  with  Hobbes,  who  had  availed  himself 
of  the  (at  that  time,  and  in  the  common  usage),  equivalent 
words,  com]3el  and  oblige,  to  confound  the  thought  of  moral  obli- 
gation with  that  of  compulsion  and  physical  necessity.  For  the 
rest,  the  remedy  must  be  provided  by  a  dictionary,  constructed  on 
the  one  only  philosophical  principle,  which,  regarding  words  as  liv- 
ing growths,  offsets,  and  organs  of  the  human  soul,  seeks  to  trace 
each  historically,  through  all  the  periods  of  its  natural  growth, 
and  accidental  modifications — a  work  worthy  of  a  Royal  and  Im- 
perial confederacy,  and  which  would  indeed  halloiv  the  Alliance  ! 
A  work  which,  executed  for  any  one  language,  would  yet  be  a 
benefaction  to  the  world,  and  to  the  nation  itself  a  source  of  im- 
mediate honor  and  of  ultimate  iveal,  beyond  the  power  of  victo- 
ries to  bestow,  or  the  mines  of  Mexico  to  purchase.  The  realiza- 
tion of  this  scheme  lies  in  the  far  distance  ;  but  in  the  meantime, 
it  can  not  but  beseem  every  individual  competent  to  its  further- 
ance, to  contribute  a  small  portion  of  the  materials  for  the  future 
temple — from  a  polished  column  to  a  hewn  stone,  or  a  plank  for 
fie  scaffolding ;  and  as  they  come  in,  to  erect  with  them  sheda 

*  "  Physiology,"  according  to  present  usage,  treats  of  the  laws  organs, 
functions,  &c.  of  fife ;  "  Physics"  not  so.  Now,  quaere :  The  etymological 
import  of  the  two  words  being  the  same,  is  the  difference  in  their  applica- 
tion accidental  and  arbitrary,  or  a  hidden  irony  at  the  assumption  on  whial 
the  division  is  grounded  ?  (pvaie  uvev  ^r,Q  uvev  2,6yu,  or  Aoyoc  nepl  tpvoew 
fir)  ^6ar]c  eort  loyoc  uloyog. 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  417 

for  the  workmen,  and  temporary  structures  for  present  use.  The 
preceding  analysis  I  would  have  you  regard  as  my  first  contribu- 
tion ;  and  the  first,  because  I  have  been  long  convinced  that  the 
want  of  it  is  a  serious  impediment — I  will  not  say,  to  that  self 
knowledge  which  it  concerns  all  men  to  attain,  but — to  that  self- 
under  standing,  or  insight,  which  it  is  all  men's  interest  that 
some  men  should  acquire ;  that  the  heaven-descended  rpwdi 
Zeavtov,"  (Juv.  Sat.)  should  exist  not  only  as  a  zuisdom,  but 
as  a  science.  But  every  science  will  have  its  rules  of  art,  and 
with  these  its  technical  terms  ;  and  in  this  best  of  sciences,  its 
elder  nomenclature  has  fallen  into  disuse,  and  no  other  been  put 
in  its  place.  To  bring  these  back  into  light,  as  so  many  delving- 
tools  dug  up  from  the  rubbish  of  long-deserted  mines,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  exemplify  their  use  and  handling,  I  have  drawn  your 
attention  to  the  three  questions  : — What  is  the  primary  and  pro- 
per sense  of  the  words  Subject  and  Object,  in  the  technical  lan- 
guage of  philosophy  ?  In  what  does  Objectivity  actually  exist  ? 
— From  what  is  all  apparent  or  assumed  Objectivity  derived  or 
transferred  ? 

It  is  not  the  age,  you  have  told  me,  to  bring  hard  words  into 
fashion.  Are  we  to  account  for  this  tender-mouthedness  on-  the 
ground  assigned  by  your  favorite,  Persius  (Sat.  iii.  113)  : 

"  Tentenius  fauces  :  tenero  latet  ulcus  in  ore 
Putre,  quod  baud  deceat  crustosis  radere  verbis  ?" 

But  is  the  age  so  averse  to  hard  words  ?  Eidouranion  Phantas- 
magoria ;  Kaleidoscope  ;  Marmorokainomenon  (for  cleaning 
mantel-pieces)  ;  Protoxides  ;  Deutoxides  ;  Tritoxides  ;  and  Dr. 
Thomson's  Latin-greek-english  Peroxides;  not  to  mention  th« 
splashing  shoals,  that 

" confound  the  language  of  the  nation 

With  long-tail'd  words  in  osity  and  ation," 

(as  our  great  living  master  of  sweet  and  perfect  English,  Hook 
ham  Frere,  has  it),  would  seem  to  argue  the  very  contrary.  In 
the  train  of  these,  methinks,  object  and  subject,  with  the  deriva- 
tives, look  tame,  and  claim  a  place  in  the  last,  or,  at  most,  in  the 
humbler  seats  of  the  second  species,  in  the  far-noised  classifica- 
tion— the  long-tailed  pigs,  and  the  short-tailed  pigs,  and  the  pigs 
without  a  tail.     Aye,  but  not  on  such  dry  topics  ! — I  submit 


4:18  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

You  have  touched  the  vulnerable  heel — 'lis,  quibus  siccum 
lumen  abest"  they  must  needs  he  dry.  We  have  Lord  Bacon's 
word  for  it.  A  topic  that  requires  steadfast  intuitions,  clear  con- 
ceptions, and  ideas,  as  the  source  and  substance  of  both,  and  that 
will  admit  of  no  substitute  for  these,  in  images,  fictions,  or  facti- 
tious facts,  must  be  dry  as  the  broad-awake  of  sight  and  day- 
light, and  desperately  barren  of  all  that  interest  which  a  busy 
yet  sensual  age  requires  and  finds  in  the  "  uda  somnia"  and 
moist  moonshine  of  an  epicurean  philosophy.  For  you,  however, 
and  for  those  who,  like  you,  are  not  so  satisfied  with  the  present 
doctrines,  but  that  you  would  fain  try  "  another  and  an  elder 
lore"  (and  such  there  are,  I  know,  and  that  the  number  is  on  the 
increase),  I  hazard  this  assurance — That  let  what  will  come  of 
the  terms,  yet  without  the  truths  conveyed  in  these  terms,  there 
can  be  no  self-knowledge  ;  and  without  this,  no'  knowledge,  of 
any  kind.  For  the  fragmentary  recollections  and  recognitions  of 
empiricism,^  usurping  the  name  of  experience,  can  amount  to 
opinion  only,  and  that  alone  is  knowledge  which  is  at  once  real 
and  systematic — or,  in  one  word,  organic.  Let  monk  and  pie- 
tist pervert  the  precept  into  sickly,  brooding,  and  morbid  intro- 
versions of  consciousness — you  have  learnt,  that,  even  under  the 
wisest  regulations,  thinking  can  go  but  half  way  toward  this 
knowledge.  To  know  the  ivhole  truth,  we  must  likewise  act  : 
and  he  alone  acts,  who  makes — and  this  can  no  man  do,  es- 
tranged from  Nature.  Learn  to  know  thyself  in  Nature,  that 
thou  mayest  understand  Nature  in  thyself. 

But  I  forget  myself.  My  pledge  and  purpose  was  to  help  you 
over  the  threshold  into  the  outer  court  ;  and  here  I  stand,  spell- 
ing the  dim  characters  interwoven  in  the  veil  of  Isis,  in  the  re- 
cesses of  the  temple. 

I  must  conclude,  therefore,  if  only  to  begin  again  without  too 

abrupt  a  drop,  lest  I  should  remind  you  of  Mr. in  his 

Survey  of  Middlesex,  who  having  digressed,  for  some  half  a  score 
of  pages,  into  the  heights  of  cosmogony,  the  old  planet  between 
Jupiter  and  Mars,  that  went  off,  and  split  into  the  four  new  ones, 
besides  the   smaller  rubbish  for  stone  showers,  the  formation  of 

*  Let  y  express  the  conditions  under  which  E  (that  is,  a  series  of  forme, 
facts,  circumstances,  &e.  presented  to  the  senses  of  an  individual)  will  be- 
come Experience — and  we  might,  not  unaptly,  define  the  two  words  thus 
K-f-y  =  Experience ;  E  —  y  =  Empiricism. 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  419 

the  galaxy,  and  the  other  world-worlds,  on  the  same  principles, 
and  by  similar  accidents,  superseding  the  hypothesis  of  a  Creator, 
and  demonstrating  the  superfluity  of  church  tithes  and  country 
parsons,  takes  up  the  stitch  again  with — But  to  return  to  the 
subject  of  dung.     God  bless  you  and  your 

Affectionate  Friend, 

S.  T.  Coleridge. 


LETTER  TIL— To  Mr.  Blackwood. 

Dear  Sir, — Here  have  I  been  sitting,  this  whole  long-lagging, 
muzzy,  mizzly  morning,  struggling  without  success  against  the  in- 
superable disgust  I  feel  to  the  task  of  explaining  the  abrupt  chasm 
at  the  outset  of  our  correspondence,  and  disposed  to  let  your  ver- 
dict take  its  course,  rather  than  suffer  over  again  by  detailing  the 
causes  of  the  stoppage  ;  though  sure  by  so  doing  to  acquit  my 
will  of  all  share  in  the  result.  Instead  of  myself,  and  of  you,  my 
dear  sir,  in  relation  to  myself,  I  have  been  thinking,  first,  of  the 
Edinburgh  Magazine  ;  then  of  the  magazines  generally  and  com- 
paratively ; — then  of  a  magazine  in  the  abstract ;  and  lastly,  of 
the  immense  importance  and  yet  strange  neglect  of  that  prime 
dictate  of  prudence  and  common  sense — Distinct  Means  to  Dis- 
tinct Ends. — But  here  I  must  put  in  one  proviso,  not  in  any  re- 
lation though  to  the  aphorism  itself,  which  is  of  universal  validity, 
but  relatively  to  my  intended  application  of  it.  I  must  assume — 
I  mean,  that  the  individuals  disposed  to  grant  me  free  access  and 
fair  audience  for  my  remarks,  have  a  conscience — such  a  portion 
at  least,  as  being  eked  out  with  superstition  and  sense  of  charac- 
ter, will  suffice  to  prevent  them  from  seeking  to  realize  the  ulti- 
'i.tate  end  (i.  e.  the  maxim  of  profit)  by  base  or  disreputable 
means.  This,  therefore,  may  be  left  out  of  the  present  argument, 
an  extensive  sale  being  the  common  object  of  all  publishers,  of 
whatever  kind  the  publications  may  be,  morally  considered.  Nor 
do  the  means  appropriate  to  this  end  differ.  Be  the  work  good 
or  evil  in  its  tendency,  in  both  cases  alike  there  is  one  question  to 
be  predetermined,  viz.  what  class  or  classes  of  the  reading  world 
the  work  is  intended  for  ?  I  made  the  proviso,  however,  because 
I  would  not  mislead  any  man  even  for  an  honest  cause,  and  my 
experience  will  not  allow  me  to  promise  an  equal  immediate  cir- 


420  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE7S 

culation  from  a  work  addressed  to  the  higher  interests  and  blame- 
less predilections  of  men,  as  from  one  constructed  on  the  plan  of 
flattering  the  envy  and  vanity  of  sciolism,  and  gratifying  the 
cravings  of  vulgar  curiosity.  Such  may  be,  and  in  some  instan- 
ces, I  doubt  not,  has  been,  the  result.  But  I  dare  not  answer  for 
it  beforehand,  even  though  both  works  should  be  equally  well 
suited  to  their  several  purposes,  which  will  not  be  thought  a 
probable  case,  when  it  is  considered,  how  much  less  talent,  an3 
of  how  much  commoner  kind,  is  required  in  the  latter. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  I  am  persuaded  that  a  sufficient 
success,  and  less  liable  to  drawbacks  from  competition,  would  not 
fail  to  attend  a  work  on  the  former  plan,  if  the  scheme  and  exe- 
cution of  the  contents  were  as  appropriate  to  the  object,  which 
the  purchasers  must  be  supposed  to  have  in  view,  as  the  means 
adopted  for  its  outward  attraction  and  its  general  circulation 
were  to  the  interest  of  its  proprietors. 

During  a  long  literary  life,  I  have  been  no  inattentive  observer 
of  periodical  publications  ;  and  I  can  remember  no  failure,  in  any 
work  deserving  success,  that  might  not  have  been  anticipated 
from  some  error  or  deficiency  in  the  means,  either  in  regard  to 
the  mode  of  circulating  the  work  (as  for  instance  by  the  vain  at- 
tempt to  unite  the  characters  of  author,  editor,  and  publisher),  or 
to  the  typographical  appearance  ;  or  else  from  its  want  of  suit- 
ableness to  the  class  of  readers,  on  whom,  it  should  have  been 
foreseen,  the  remunerating  sale  must  principally  depend.  It 
would  be  misanthropy  to  suppose  that  the  seekers  after  truth,  in- 
formation, and  innocent  amusement,  are  not  sufficiently  numerous 
to  support  a  work,  in  which  these  attractions  are  prominent, 
without  the  dishonest  aid  of  personality,  literary  faction,  or 
treacherous  invasions  of  the  sacred  recesses  of  private  life,  without 
slanders,  which  both  reason  and  duty  command  us  to  disbelieve 
as  well  as  abhor;  for  what  but  falsehood,  or  that  half  truth, 
which  is  falsehood  in  its  most  malignant  form,  can  or  ought  to  be 
expected  from  a  self-convicted  traitor  and  ingrate  ? 

If  these  remarks  are  well  founded,  we  may  narrow  the  problem 
to  the  few  following  terms, — it  being  understood,  that  the  work 
now  in  question,  is  a  monthly  publication,  not  devoted  to  any  one 
branch  of  knowledge  or  literature,  but  a  magazine  of  whatever 
may  be  supposed  to  interest  readers  in  general,  not  excluding  the 
discoveries,  or  even  the  speculations  of  science,  that  are  generally 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  421 

intelligible  and  interesting,  so  that  the  portion  devoted  to  any  one 
subject  or  department,  shall  be  kept  proportionate  to  the  number 
of  readers  for  whom  it  may  be  supposed  to  have  a  particular  in- 
terest. Here,  however,  we  must  not  forget,  that  however  few  the 
actual  dilettanti,  or  men  of  the  fancy  may  be,  yet,  as  long  as  tho 
articles  remain  generally  intelligible  (in  pugilism,  for  instance), 
Variety  and  Novelty  communicate  attraction  that  interests  all. 
Homo  sum,  nihil  humani  a  me  alienum.  If  to  this  we  add  the 
exclusion  of  theological  controversy,  which  is  endless,  I  shall  have 
pretty  accurately  described  the  Edinburgh  Magazine,  as  to  its 
characteristic  plan  and  purposes  ;  which  may,  I  think,  be  com 
prised  in  three  terms,  as  a  Philosophical,  Philological,  and  #JEs 

*  I  wish  I  could  find  a  more  familiar  word  than  aesthetic,  for  works  of 
taste  and  criticism.  It  is,  however,  in  all  respects  better,  and  of  more  rep- 
utable origin,  than  belletristic.  To  be  sure,  there  is  tasty ;  but  that  has 
been  long  ago  emasculated  for  all  unworthy  uses  by  milliners,  tailors,  and 
the  androgynous  correlatives  of  both,  formerly  called  its,  and  now  yclept 
dandies.  As  our  language,  therefore,  contains  no  other  usable  adjective,  to 
express  that  coincidence  of  form,  feeling,  and  intellect,  that  something 
which,  confirming  the  inner  and  outward  senses,  becomes  a  new  sense  in  it- 
self, to  be  tried  by  laws  of  its  own,  and  acknowledging  the  laws  of  the 
understanding  so  far  only  as  not  to  contradict  them ;  that  faculty  which, 
when  possessed  in  a  high  degree,  the  Greeks  termed  §ikoKa7da  but  when 
spoken  of  generally,  or  in  kind  only,  to  alodrjTiitov  ;  and  for  which  even  our 
substantive,  Taste,  is  a — not  inappropriate — but  very  inadequate  metaphor  ; 
there  is  reason  to  hope,  that  the  term  aesthetic,  will  be  brought  into  common 
use  as  soon  as  distinct  thoughts  and  definite  expressions  shall  once  more  be- 
come the  requisite  accomplishment  of  a  gentleman.  So  it  was  in  the  ener- 
getic days,  and  in  the  starry  court  of  our  English-hearted  Eliza ;  when 
trade,  the  nurse  of  freedom,  was  the  enlivening  counterpoise  of  agriculture, 
not  its  alien  and  usurping  spirit ;  when  commerce  had  all  the  enterprise, 
and  more  than  the  romance  of  war ;  when  the  precise  yet  pregnant,  termin- 
ology of  the  schools  gave  bone  and  muscle  to  the  diction  of  poetry  and  elo- 
quence, and  received  from  them  in  return  passion  and  harmony ;  but,  above 
all,  when  from  the  self-evident  truth,  that  what  in  hind  constitutes  the  su- 
periority of  man  to  animal,  the  same  in  degree  must  constitute  the  superi- 
ority of  men  to  each  other,  the  practical  inference  was  drawn,  that  every 
proof  of  these  distinctive  faculties  being  in  a  tense  and  active  state,  that  even 
the  sparks  and  crackling  of  mental  electricity,  in  the  sportive  approaches 
and  collisions  of  ordinary  intercourse  (such  as  we  have  in  the  wit-combata 
of  Benedict  and  Beatrice,  of  Mercutio,  and  in  the  dialogues  assigned  to  cour- 
tiers and  gentlemen,  by  all  the  dramatic  writers  of  that  reign),  are  stronger 
indications  of  natural  superiority,  and,  therefore,  more  becoming  signs  and 
accompaniments  of  artificial  rank,  than  apathy,  studied  mediocrity,  and  the 


422  SELECTION   FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

thetic  Miscellany.  The  word  miscellany,  however,  must  be  taken 
as  involving  a  predicate  in  itself,  in  addition  to  the  three  preced- 
ing epithets,  comprehending,  namely,  all  the  ephemeral  births  of 
intellectual  life,  which  add  to  the  gaiety  and  variety  of  the  work, 
without  interfering  with  its  express  and  regular  objects. 

Having  thus  a  sufficiently  definite  notion  of  what  your  Maga 
zine  is,  and  is  intended  to  be,  I  proposed  to  myself,  as  a  problem, 
to  find  out,  in  detail,  what  the  means  would  be  to  the  most  per- 
fect attainment  of  this  end.  In  other  words,  what  the  scheme, 
and  of  what  nature,  and  in  what  order  and  proportion,  the  con- 
tents should  be  of  a  monthly  publication  ;  in  order  for  it  to  verify 
the  title  of  a  Philosophical,  Philological,  and  ^Esthetic  Miscellany 
and  Magazine.  The  result  of  my  lucubrations  I  hope  to  forward 
in  my  next,  under  the  ti'tle  of  "  The  Ideal  of  a  Magazine  ;"  and 
to  mark  those  departments,  in  the  filling  up  of  which,  I  flatter 
myself  with  the  prospect  of  being  a  fellow-laborer.  But  since  7 
began  this  scrawl,  a  friend  reminded  me  of  a  letter  I  wrote  him 
many  years  ago,  on  the  improvement  of  the  mind,  by  the  habit 
of  commencing  our  inquiries  with  the  attempt  to  construct  the 
most  absolute  or  perfect  form  of  the  object  desiderated,  leaving 
its  practicability,  in  the  first  instance,  undetermined.  An  essay, 
in  short,  de  emendatione  intellectiis  per  ideas — the  beneficial  in- 
fluence of  which,  on  his  mind,  he  spoke  of  with  warmth.  The 
main  contents  of  the  letter,  the  effect  of  which,  my  friend  appre- 
ciated so  highly,  were  derived  from  conversation  with  a  great 
man,  now  no  more.  And  as  I  have  reason  to  regard  that  con- 
versation as  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  my  own  mind,  I  feel 
myself  encouraged  to  hope  that  its  publication  may  not  prove 
useless  to  some  of  your  numerous  readers,  to  whom  Nature  has 
given  the  stream,  and  nothing  is  wanting  but  to  be  led  in  the 
right  channel.  There  is  one  other  motive  to  which  I  must  plead 
conscious,  not  only  in  the  following,  but  in  all  of  these,  my  pre- 
liminary contributions  ;  viz.  That  by  the  reader's  agreement 
with  the  principles,  and  sympathy  with  the  general  feelings, 

ostentation  of  wealth.  When  I  think  of  the  vigor  and  felicity  of  style 
sharacteristic  of  the  age,  from  Edward  VI.  to  the  restoration  of  Charles,  and 
observable  in  the  letters  and  family  memoirs  of  noble  families — take,  for  in- 
stance, the  life  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  written  by  his  widow — I  can  not  sup- 
press the  wish — 0  that  the  habits  of  those  days  could  return,  even  though 
they  should  bring  pedantry  and  Euphuism  in  their  train ! 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  423 

which  they  are  meant  to  impress,  the  interest  of  my  future  con- 
tributions, and  still  more,  their  permanent  effect,  will  be  heighten- 
ed ;  and  most  so  in  those,  in  which,  as  narrative  and  imaginative 
compositions,  there  is  the  least  show  of  reflection,  on  my  part, 
and  the  least  necessity  for  it, — though  I  flatter  myself  not  the 
least  opportunity  on  the  part  of  my  readers. 

It  will  be  better  too,  if  I  mistake  not,  both  for  your  purposes 
and  mine,  to  have  it  said  hereafter,  that  he  dragged  slow  and 
stiff-knee'd  up  the  first  hill,  but  sprang  forward  as  soon  as  the 
road  was  full  before  him,  and  got  in  fresh  ;  than  that  he  set  off 
in  grand  style — broke  up  midway,  and  came  in  broken-winded. 
Finis  coronat  opus.  Yours,  &c. 

S.  T.  Coleridge. 


LETTER  IV.     To  a  Junior  Soph,  at  Cambridge. 

Often,  my  dear  young  friend  !  often,  and  bitterly,  do  I  regret 
the  stupid  prejudice  that  made  me  neglect  my  mathematical 
studies  at  Jesus.  There  is  something  to  me  enigmatically  attrac- 
tive and  imaginative  in  the  generation  of  curves,  and  in  the 
whole  geometry  of  motion.  I  seldom  look  at  a  fine  prospect  or 
mountain  landscape,  or  even  at  a  grand  picture,  without  ab- 
stracting the  lines  with  a  feeling  similar  to  that  with  which  I 
should  contemplate  the  graven  or  painted  walls  of  some  temple 
or  palace  in  Mid  Africa, — doubtful  whether  it  were  mere  Ara- 
besque, or  undeciphered  characters  of  an  unknown  tongue,  framed 
when  the  language  of  men  was  nearer  to  that  of  nature, — a 
language  of  symbols  and  correspondences.  I  am,  therefore,  far 
more  disposed  to  envy,  than  join  in  the  laugh  against  your  fel- 
low-collegiate', for  amusing  himself  in  the  geometrical  construction 
of  leaves  and  flowers. 

Since  the  receipt  of  your  last,  I  never  take  a  turn  round  the 
garden  without  thinking  of  his  billow-lines  and  shell-lines,  under 
the  well-sounding  names  of  Cumaids  and  Conchoids  ;  they  have 
as-  much  life  and  poetry  for  me,  as  their  elder  sisters,  the  Naiads, 
Nereids,  and  Hama-dryads.  I  pray  you,  present  my  best  respects 
to  him,  and  tell  him,  that  he  brought  to  my  recollection  the 
glorious  passage  in  Plotinus,  "  Should  any  one  interrogate  Nature 
hotv  she  works  ?  if  graciously  she  vouchsafes  to  answer,  she  wiL 


424  SELECTION    FROM   MR.   COLERIDGE'S 

say,  It  behooves  tliee  to  understand  me  (or  better,  and  more  lit 
erally,  to  go  along  with  me)  in  silence,  even  as  I  am  silent,  and 
work  without  words  ;" — but  you  have  a  Plotinus,  and  may  con- 
strue it  for  yourself. — (Ennead  3.  1.  8,  c.  3),  attending  particularly 
to  the  comparison  of  the  process  pursued  by  Nature,  with  that 
of  the  geometrician.  And  now  for  your  questions  respecting  the 
moral  influence  of  W.'s  minor  poems.  Of  course,  this  will  be 
greatly  modified  by  the  character  of  the  recipient.  But  that  in 
the  majority  of  instances  it  has  been  most  salutary,  I  can  not 
for  a  moment  doubt.  But  it  is  another  question  whether  verse  is 
the  best  way  of  disciplining  the  mind  to  that  spiritual  alchemy, 
which  communicates  a  sterling  value  to  real  or  apparent  trifles, 
by  using  them  as  moral  diagrams,  as  your  friend  uses  the  oak 
and  fig-leaves  as  geometrical  ones.  To  have  formed  the  habit 
of  looking  at  every  thing,  not  for  what  it  is  relative  to  the  pur- 
poses and  associations  of  men  in  general,  but  for  the  truths  which 
it  is  suited  to  represent — to  contemplate  objects  as  ivords  and 
pregnant  symbols — the  advantages  of  this,  my  dear  D.,  are  so 
many,  and  so  important,  so  eminently  calculated  to  excite  and 
evolve  the  power  of  sound  and  connected  reasoning,  of  distinct 
and  clear  conception,  and  of  genial  feeling,  that  there  were  few 
of  W.'s  finest  passages — and  who,  of  living  poets,  can  lay  claim 
to  half  the  number  ? — that  I  repeat  so  often,  as  that  homely 
quatrain, 

0  reader  !  bad  you  in  your  mind 

Such  stores  as  silent  thought  can  bring ; 

0  gentle  reader  !  you  would  find 
A  tale  in  every  thing. 

You  did  not  know  my  revered  friend  and  patron ;  or  rather, 
you  do  know  the  man,  and  mourn  his  loss,  from  the  character  I 
have*  lately  given  of  him. — The  following  supposed  dialogue  ac- 
tually took  place,  in  a  conversation  with  him  ;  and  as  in  part, 
an  illustration  of  what  I  have  already  said,  and  in  part  as  text 
and  introduction  to  much  I  would  wish  to  say,  I  entreat  you  to 
read  it  with  patience,  spite  of  the  triviality  of  the  subject,  and 
mock-heroic  of  the  title. 

*  In  the  8th  Number  of  The  Friend,  as  first  circulated  by  the  post.  I 
dare  assert,  that  it  is  worthy  of  preservation,  and  wi.l  send  a  transcript  in 
my  next. 


LITERARY  CORRESPONDENCE.  42; 


SUBSTANCE    OF    A    DIALOGUE,   WITH    A    COMMENTARY    ON    THE    SAME, 

A.  I  never  found  yet,  an  ink-stand  that  I  was  satisfied  with. 

B.  What  would  you  have  an  ink-stand  to  be  ?  "What  qualities 
and  properties  would  you  wish  to  have  combined  in  an  ink-stand  ? 
Reflect  !  Consult  your  past  experience  ;  taking  care,  however, 
not  to  desire  things  demonstrably,  or  self-evidently  incompatible 
with  each  other  ;  and  the  union  of  these  desiderata  will  be  your 
ideal  of  an  ink-stand.  A  friend,  perhaps,  suggests  some  additional 
excellence  that  might  rationally  be  desired,  till  at  length  the 
catalogue  may  be  considered  as  complete,  when  neither  yourself, 
nor  others,  can  think  of  any  desideratum  not  anticipated  or  pre- 
cluded by  some  one  or  more  of  the  points  already  enumerated  ; 
and  the  conception  of  all  these,  as  realized  in  one  and  the  same 
artefact,  may  be  fairly  entitled,  the 

ideal  of  an  Ink-stand. 

That  the  pen  should  be  allowed,  without  requiring  any  effort 
or  interruptive  act  of  attention  from  the  writer,  to  dip  sufficiently 
low,  and  yet  be  prevented,  without  injuring  its  nib,  from  dipping 
too  low,  or  taking  up  too  much  ink  :  that  the  ink-stand  should 
be  of  such  materials  as  not  to  decompose  the  ink,  or  occasion  a 
deposition  or  discoloration  of  its  specific  ingredients,  as,  from  what 
cause  I  know  not,  is  the  fault  of  the  black  Wedgewood-ware  ink- 
stands ;  that  it  should  be  so  constructed,  that  on  being  overturned 
the  ink  can  not  escape  ;  and  so  protected,  or  made  of  such  stuff, 
that  in  case  of  a  blow  or  a  fall  from  any  common  height,  the  ink- 
stand itself  will  not  be  broken  ; — that  from  both  these  qualities, 
and  from  its  shape,  it  may  be  safely  and  commodiously  travelled 
with,  and  packed  up  with  books,  linen,  or  whatever  else  is  likely 
to  form  the  contents  of  the  portmanteau,  or  travelling  trunk  ; — 
that  it  should  stand  steadily  and  commodiously,  and  be  of  as 
pleasing  a  shape  and  appearance  as  is  compatible  with  its  more 
important  uses  ; — and,  lastly,  though  of  minor  regard,  and  non- 
essential, that  it  be  capable  of  including  other  implements  or 
requisites,  always,  or  occasionally  connected  with  the  art  of  wri- 
ting, as  pen-knife,  wafers,  &c,  without  any  addition  to  the  size 
and  weight,  otherwise  desirable,  and  without  detriment  to  its 
more  important  and  proper  advantages. 


426  SELECTION   FROM   MR.   COLERIDGE'S 

Now  (continued  B.)  that  we  have  an  adequate  notion  of  what 
is  to  be  wished,  let  us  try  what  is  to  be  done  !  And  my  friend 
actually  succeeded  in  constructing  an  ink-stand,  in  which,  during 
the  twelve  years  that  have  elapsed  since  this  conversation,  alas  ! 
I  might  almost  say  since  his  death,  I  have  never  been  able,  though 
I  have  put  my  wits  on  the  stretch,  to  detect  any  thing  wanting 
that  an  ink-stand  could  be  rationally  desired  to  possess  ;  or 
even  to  imagine  any  addition,  detraction,  or  change,  for  use  cr 
appearance,  that  I  could  desire,  without  involving  a  contradic- 
tion. 

Here  !  (methinks  I  hear  the  reader  exclaim)  Here's  a  medita- 
tion on  a  broom-stick  with  a  vengeance  !  Now,  in  the  first  place, 
I  am,  and  I  do  not  care  who  knows  it,  no  enemy  to  meditations 
on  broom-sticks  ;  and  though  Boyle  had  been  the  real  author  of 
the  article  so  waggishly  passed  off  for  his  on  poor  Lady  Berkeley  ; 
and  though  that  good  man  had  written  it  in  grave  and  good 
earnest,  I  am  not  certain  that  he  would  not  have  been  em- 
ploying his  time  as  creditably  to  himself,  and  as  profitably  for  a 
large  class  of  readers,  as  the  witty  dean  was  while  composing  the 
Draper's  Letters,  though  the  Muses  forbid  that  I  should  say  the 
same  of  Mary  Cooke's  Petition,  Hamilton's  Bawn,  or  even  the 
rhyming  correspondence  with  Dr.  Sheridan.  In  hazarding  this 
confession,  however,  I  beg  leave  to  put  in  a  provided  always, 
that  the  said  Meditation  on  Broom-stick,  or  aliud  qnidlibet  ejus- 
dem  farina,  shall  be  as  truly  a  meditation  as  the  broom-stick  is 
verily  a  broom-stick — and  that  the  name  be  not  a  misnomer  of 
vanity,  or  fraudulently  labelled  on  a  mere  compound  of  brain- 
dribble  and  printer's  ink.  For  meditation,  I  presume,  is  that  act 
of  the  mind,  by  which  it  seeks  within  either  the  laiv  of  the  phe- 
nomena, which  it  had  contemplated  without  (meditatio  scientifica), 
or  semblances,  symbols,  and  analogies,  corresponsive  to  the  same 
(meditatio  ethica).  At  all  events,  therefore,  it  implies  thinking, 
and  tends  to  make  the  reader  think;  and  whatever  does  this, 
does  what  in  the  present  over-excited  state  of  society  is  most 
wanted,  though  perhaps  least  desired.  Between  the  thinking 
of  a  Harvey  or  Q.uarles,  and  the  thinking  of  a  Bacon  or  a  Fene- 
lon,  many  are  the  degrees  of  difference,  and  many  the  differences 
in  degree  of  depth  and  originality  ;  but  not  such  as  to  fill  up  the 
chasm  in  genere  between  thinking  and  no-thinking,  or  to  render 
the  discrimination  difficult  for  a  man  of  ordinary  understanding, 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  427 

not  under  the  same*  contagion  of  vanity  as  the  writer.  Besides, 
there  are  shallows  for  the  full-grown,  that  are  the  maxims  of 
safe  depth  for  the  younglings.  There  are  truths,  quite  common- 
place to  you  and  me,  that  for  the  uninstructed  many  would  be 
new  and  full  of  wonder,  as  the  common  daylight  to  the  Lapland 
child  at  the  re-ascension  of  its  second  summer.  Thanks  and 
honor  in  the  highest  to  those  stars  of  the  first  magnitude  that 
shoot  their  beams  downward,  and  while  in  their  proper  form  they 
stir  and  invirtuate  the  sphere  next  below  them,  and  natures  pre- 
assimilated  to  their  influence,  yet  call  forth  likewise,  each  after 
its  own  form  or  model,  whatever  is  best  in  whatever  is  suscepti- 
ble to  each,  even  in  the  lowest.  But,  excepting  these,  I  confess 
that  I  seldom  look  at  Hervey's  Meditations,  or  Gtuarles'  Em- 
blems,! without  feeling  that  I  would  rather  be  the  author  of  those 
books — of  the  innocent  pleasure,  the  purifying  emotions,  and 
genial  awakenings  of  the  humanity  through  the  whole  man, 
which  those  books  have  given  to  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
— than  shine  the  brightest  in  the  constellation  of  fame  among 
the  heroes  and  Dii  minores  of  literature.  But  I  have  a  better 
excuse,  and  if  not  a  better,  yet  a  less  general  motive,  for  this 
solemn  trifling,  as  it  will  seem,  and  one  that  will,  I  trust,  rescue 
my  ideal  of  an  inkstand  from  being  doomed  to  the  same  slut's 
corner  with  the  tie  tribus  Capellis,  or  cle  umbra  asini,  by  virtue 
of  the  process  which  it  exemplifies  ;  though  I  should  not  quarrel 
with  the  allotment,  if  its  risible  merits  allowed  it  to  keep  com- 

*  "  Verily,  to  ask,  what  meaneth  this  ?  is  no  Herculean  labor.  And  the 
reader  languishes  under  the  same  vain-glory  as  his  author,  and  hath  laid  his 
head  on  the  other  knee  of  Omphale,  if  he  can  mistake  the  thin  vocables  of 
incogitance  for  the  consubstantial  words  which  thought  begetteth  and  goeth 
forth  in."— Sir  T.  Brown,  MSS. 

\  A  full  collection,  a  Bibliotheca  Specialis,  of  the  books  of  emblems  and 
symbols,  of  all  sects  and  parties,  moral,  theological,  or  political,  including 
those  in  the  Centenaries  and  Jubilee  volumes  published  by  the  Jesuit  and 
other  religious  orders,  is  a  desideratum  in  our  library  literature  that  would 
well  employ  the  talents  of  our  ingenious  masters  in  wood-engraving,  etch- 
ing, and  lithography,  under  the  superintendence  of  a  Dibdin,  and  not  un- 
worthy of  royal  and  noble  patronage,  or  the  attention  of  a  Longman  and 
his  compeers.  Singly  or  jointly  undertaken,  it  would  do  honor  to  these 
princely  merchants  in  the  service  of  the  muses.  What  stores  might  not  a 
Southey  contribute  as  notes  or  interspersed  prefaces  ?  I  could  dream  awav 
an  hour  on  the  subject. 


428  SELECTION  FROM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

pany  with  the  ideal  immortalized  by  Kab3lais  in  his  disquisition 
inquisitory  De  Rebus  optime  abstergentibus. 

Dared  I  mention  the  name  of  my  Idealize?',  a  name  dear  to 
science,  and  consecrated  by  discoveries  of  far-extending  utility,  it 
would  at  least  give  a  biovrajihical  interest  to  this  trifling  anec- 
dote, and  perhaps  entitle  me  to  claim  for  it  a  yet  higher,  as  a 
trait  in  minimis,  characteristic  of  a  class  of  powerful  and  most 
beneficent  intellects.  For  to  the  same  process  of  thought  we  owe 
whatever  instruments  of  power  have  been  bestowed  on  mankind 
by  science  and  genius  ;  and  only  such  deserve  the  name  of  inven- 
tions or  discoveries.  But  even  in  those,  which  chance  may  seem 
to  claim,  "  quce  homini  obvenisse  videantur  potius  quam  homo 
venire  in  ea" — which  come  to  us  rather  than  we  to  them — this 
process  will  most  often  be  found  as  the  indispensable  antecedent 
of  the  discovery — as  the  condition,  without  which  the  suggesting 
accident  would  have  whispered  to  deaf  ears,  unnoticed  ;  or,  like 
the  faces  in  the  fire,  or  the  landscapes  made  by  damp  on  a  white- 
washed wall,  noticed  for  their  oddity  alone.  To  the  birth  of  the 
tree  a  prepared  soil  is  as  necessary  as  the  falling  seed.  A  Daniel 
was  present  ;  or  the  fatal  characters  in  the  banquet-hall  of  Bel- 
shazzar  might  have  struck  more  terror,  but  would  have  been  of 
no  more  import  than  the  trail  of  a  luminous  worm.  In  the  far 
greater  number,  indeed,  of  these  asserted  boons  of  chance,  it  is 
the  accident  that  should  be  called  the  condition — and  often  not 
so  much,  but  merely  the  occasion — while  the  proper  cause  of  the 
invention  is  to  be  sought  for  in  the  co-existing  state  and  previous 
habit  of  the  observer's  mind.  I  can  not  bring  myself  to  account 
for  respiration  from  the  stimulus  of  the  air,  without  ascribing  to 
the  specific  stimulability  of  the  lungs  a  yet  more  important  part 
in  the  joint  product.  To  how  many  myriads  of  individuals  had 
not  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  lid  in  a  boiling  kettle  been  familiar, 
an  appearance  daily  and  hourly  in  sight  ?  But  it  was  reserved 
for  a  mind  that  understood  what  was  to  be  wished  and  knew 
what  was  wanted  in  order  to  its  fulfilment — for  an  armed  eye, 
which  meditation  had  made  contemplative,  an  eye  armed  from 
within,  with  an  instrument  of  higher  powers  than  glasses  can 
give,  with  the  logic  of  method,  the  only  true  Organum  Flevris- 
ticum  which  possesses  the  former  and  better  half  of  knowledge 
in  itself  as  the  science  of  wise  questioning,*  and  the  other  half  in 

*  "Prudens  qusestio  dimidiiira  scientiae,"  says  our  Verulam,  the  second 


LITERARY"  CORRESPONDENCE.  429 

reversion. — it  was  reserved  for  the  Marquis  of  Worcester  to  see 
and  have  given  into  his  hands,  from  the  alternation  of  expansion 
and  vacuity,  a  power  mightier  than  that  of  Vulcan  and  all  his 
Cyclops  :  a  power  that  found  its  practical  limit  only  where  nature 
could  supply  no  limit  strong  enough  to  confine  it.  For  the  genial 
spirit,  that  saw  what  it  had  been  seeking,  and  saw  because  it 
sought,  was  it  reserved  in  the  dancing  lid  of  a  kettle  or  cofiee- 
urn,  to  behold  the  future  steam-engine,  the  Talus,  with  whom 
the  Britomart  of  science  is  now  gone  forth  to  subdue  and  human- 
ize the  planet  !  When  the  bodily  organ,  steadying  itself  on  some 
chance  thing,  imitates,  as  it  were,  the  fixture  of  "  the  inward 
eye"  on  its  ideal  shapings,  then  it  is  that  Nature  not  seldom  re- 
veals her  close  affinity  with  mind,  with  that  more  than  man 
which  is  one  and  the  same  in  all  men,  and  from  which 

"  the  soul  receives 
Reason  :  and  reason  is  her  being  !'' 

Par.  Lost. 

Then  it  is,  that  Nature,  like  an  individual  spirit  or  fellow-soul, 
seems  to  think  and  hold  commune  with  us.  If,  in  the  present 
contempt  of  all  mental  analysis  not  contained  in  Locke,  Haitley, 
or  Condillac,  it  were  safe  to  borrow  from  "  scholastic  lore"  a 
technical  term  or  two,  for  which  I  have  not  yet  found  any  sub- 
stitute equally  convenient  and  serviceable,  I  should  say,  that  at 
such  moments  Nature,  as  another  subject  veiled  behind  the  visi- 
ble object  without  us,  solicits  the  intelligible  object  hid,  and  yet 
struggling  beneath  the  subject  within  us,  and  like  a  helping 
Lucina,  brings  it  forth  for  us  into  distinct  consciousness  and  com- 
mon light.  Who  has  not  tried  to  get  hold  of  some  half-remem- 
bered name,  mislaid  as  it  were  in  the  memory,  and  yet  felt  to  be 
there  ?  And  who  has  not  experienced,  how  at  length  it  seems 
given  to  us,  as  if  some  other  unperceived  had  been  employed  in 
the  same  search?  And  what  are  the  objects  last  spoken  of, 
which  are  in  the  subject  (i.  e.  the  individual  mind),  yet  not  sub- 
jective, but  of  universal  validity,  no  accidents  of  a  particular  mind 
resulting  from  its  individual  structure,  no,  nor  even  of  the  human 
mind,  as  a  particular  class  or  rank  of  inteliigencies,  but  of  im- 

founder  of  the  science,  and  the  first  who  on  principle  applied  it  to  the  ideas 
in  nature,  as  his  great  compeer  Plato  had  before  done  to  the  laws  in  the 
niind. 


430  SELECTION    FKOM   MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

perishable  subsistence  ;  and  though  not  things  (i.  e.  shapes  in 
outward  space),  yet  equally  independent  of  the  beholder,  and 
more  than  equally  real — what,  I  say,  are  those  but  the  names  of 
nature  ?  the  nomina  quasi  vov/nera,  opposed  by  the  wisest  of  the 
Greek  schools  to  phcenomena,  as  the  intelligible  correspondents  or 
correlatives  in  the  mind  to  the  invisible  supporters  of  the  ap- 
pearances in  the  world  of  the  senses,  the  upholding  powers  that 
can  not  be  seen,  but  the  presence  and  actual  being  of  which 
must  be  supposed — nay,  ivill  be  supposed,  in  defiance  of  every  at- 
tempt to  the  contrary  by  a  crude  materialism,  so  alien  from  hu- 
manity, that  there  does  not  exist  a  language  on  earth,  in  which 
it  could  be  conveyed  without  a  contradiction  between  the  sense, 
and  the  words  employed  to  express  it  ! 

Is  this  a  mere  random  flight  in  etymology,  hunting  a  bubble, 
and  bringing  back  the  film?  I  can  not  think  so  contemptuously 
of  the  attempt  to  fix  and  restore  the  true  import  of  any  word  ; 
but,  in  this  instance,  I  should  regard  it  as  neither  unprofitable, 
nor  devoid  of  rational  interest,  were  it  only  that  the  knowledge 
and  reception  of  the  import  here  given,  as  the  etymon,  or  genuine 
sense  of  the  word,  would  save  Christianity  from  the  reproach  of 
containing  a  doctrine  so  repugnant  to  the  best  feelings  of  human- 
ity, as  is  inculcated  in  the  following  passage,  among  a  hundred 
others  to  the  same  purpose,  in  earlier,  and  in  more  recent  works, 
sent  forth  by  professed  Christians.  "Most  of  the  men,  who  are 
now  alive,  or  that  have  been  living  for  many  ages,  are  Jews, 
Heathens,  or  Mahometans,  strangers  and  enemies  to  Christ,  in 
whose  name  alone  we  can  be  saved.  This  consideration  is 
extremely  sad,  when  we  remember  how  great  an  evil  it  is,  that 
so  many  millions  of  sons  and  daughters  are  bom  to  enter  into 
the  possession  of  devils  to  eternal  ages." — Taylor's  Holy  Dying, 
p.  28.  Even  Sir  T.  Brown,  while  his  heart  is  evidently  wrestling 
with  the  dogma  grounded  on  the  trivial  interpretation  of  the 
word,  nevertheless  receives  it  in  this  sense,  and  expresses  most 
gloomy  apprehensions  "of  the  ends  of  those  honest  worthies  and 
philosophers,"  who  died  before  the  birth  of  our  Saviour:  "It  is 
hard,"  says  he,  "to  place  those  souls  in  hell,  whose  worthy  lives 
did  teach  us  virtue  on  earth.  How  strange  to  them  will  sound 
the  history  of  Adam,  when  they  shall  sutler  for  him  they  never 
heard  of!"  Yet  he  concludes  by  condemning  the  insolence  of 
reason  in  daring  to  doubt  or  controvert  the  verity  of  the  doctrine, 


LITEEARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  431 

or  "to  question  the  justice  of  the  proceeding,"  which  verity,  he 
fears,  the  woful  lot  of  "these  great  examples  of  virtue  must 
confirm." 

But  here  I  must  break  off. 

Yours  most  affectionately, 

S.  T.  Coleeidge. 


LETTER  V.— To  the  Same. 

My  dear  D. — The  philosophic  poet,  whom  I  quoted  in  my 
last,  may  here  and  there  have  stretched  his  prerogative  in  a  war 
of  offence  on  the  general  associations  of  his  contemporaries. 
Here  and  there,  though  less  than  the  least  of  what  the  Buffoons 
of  parody,  and  the  Zanies  of  anonymous  criticism,  would  have  us 
believe,  he  may  be  thought  to  betray  a  preference  of  mean  or 
trivial  instances  for  grand  morals,  a  capricious  predilection  for 
incidents  that  contrast  with  the  depth  and  novelty  of  the  truths 
they  are  to  exemplify.  But  still  to  the  principle,  to  the  habit  of 
tracing  the  presence  of  the  high  in  the  humble,  the  mysterious 
Dii  Cabiri,  in  the  form  of  the  dwarf  Miner,  with  hammer  and 
spade,  and  week-day  apron,  we  must  attribute  Wordsworth's 
'peculiar  power,  his  leavening  influence  on  the  opinions,  feelings, 
and  pursuits  of  his  admirers, — most  on  the  young  of  most  promise 
and  highest  acquirements  ;  and  that,  while  others  are  read  with 
delight,  his  works  are  a  religion.  A  case  still  more  in  point 
occurs  to  me,  and  for  the  truth  of  which  I  dare  pledge  myself. 
The  art  of  printing  alone  seems  to  have  been  privileged  with  a 
Minerval  birth,  to  have  risen  in  its  zenith  ;  but  next  to  this,  per- 
haps, the  rapid  and  almost  instantaneous  advancement  of  pottery 
from  the  state  in  which  Mr.  Wedgwood  found  the  art,  to  its 
demonstrably  highest  practicable  perfection,  is  the  most  striking 
fact  in  the  history  of  modern  improvements  achieved  by  individual 
genius.  In  his  early  manhood,  an  obstinate  and  harassing  com- 
plaint confined  him  to  his  room  for  more  than  two  years;  and  to 
this  apparent  calamity  Mr.  Wedgwood  was  wont  to  attribute  his 
after  unprecedented  success.  For  a  while,  as  was  natural,  the 
sense  of  thus  losing  the  prime  and  vigor  of  his  life  and  faculties, 
preyed  on  his  mind  incessantly — aggravated,  no  doubt,  by  the 
thought  of  what  he  should  have  been  doing  this  hour  and  this. 


432  SELECTION   FKOM  MR.    COLERIDGE'S 

had  he  not  been  thus  severely  visited.  Then,  what  he  should 
like  to  take  in  hand  :  and  lastly,  what  it  was  desirable  to  do,  and 
how  far  it  might  be  done,  till  generalizing  more  and  more,  the 
mind  began  to  feed  on  the  thoughts,  which,  at  their  first  evolu- 
tion (in  their  larva  state,  may  I  say?),  had  preyed  on  the  mind. 
We  imagine  the  presence  of  what  we  desire  in  the  very  act  of 
regretting  its  absence,  nay,  in  order  to  regret  it  the  more  live- 
lily  ;  but  while,  with  a  strange  wilfulness,  we  are  thus  engender- 
ing grief  on  grief,  nature  makes  use  of  the  product  to  cheat  us 
into  comfort  and  exertion.  The  positive  shapings,  though  but  of 
the  fancy,  will  sooner  or  later  displace  the  mere  knowledge  of  the 
negative.  All  activity  is  in  itself  pleasure ;  and  according  to  the 
nature,  powers,  and  previous  habits  of  the  sufferer,  the  activity  of 
the  fancy  will  call  the  other  faculties  of  the  soul  into  action.  The 
self-contemplative  power  becomes  meditative,  and  the  mind  begins 
to  play  the  geometrician  with  its  own  thoughts — abstracting  from 
them  the  accidental  and  individual,  till  a  new  and  unfailing 
source  of  employment,  the  best  and  surest  nepenthe  of  solitary 
pain,  is  opened  out  in  the  habit  of  seeking  the  principle  and  ulti- 
mate aim  in  the  most  imperfect  productions  of  art,  in  the  least 
attractive  products  of  nature  ;  of  beholding  the  possible  in  the 
real ;  of  detecting  the  essential  form  in  the  intentional ;  above 
all,  in  the  collation  and  constructive  imagining  of  the  outward 
shapes  and  material  forces  that  shall  best  express  the  essential 
form,  in  its  coincidence  with  the  idea,  or  realize  most  adequately 
that  power,  which  is  one  with  its  correspondent  knowledge,  as  the 
revealing  body  with  its  indwelling  soul. 

Another  motive  will  present  itself,  and  one  that  comes  nearer 
home,  and  is  of  more  general  application,  if  we  reflect  on  the 
habit  here  recommended,  as  a  source  of  support  and  consolation 
in  circumstances  under  which  we  might  otherwise  sink  back  on 
ourselves,  and  for  want  of  colloquy  with  our  thoughts,  with  the 
objects  and  presentations  of  the  inner  sense,  lie  listening  to  the 
fretful  ticking  of  our  sensations.  A  resource  of  costless  value 
has  that  man,  who  has  brought  himself  to  a  habit  of  measuring 
the  objects  around  him  by  their  intended  or  possible  ends,  and 
the  proportion  in  which  this  end  is  realized  in  each.  It  is  the 
neglect  of  thus  educating  the  senses,  of  thus  disciplining,  and,  in 
the  proper  and  primitive  sense  of  the  word,  informing  the  fancy, 
that  distinguishes  at  first  sight  the  ruder  states  of  society.    Every 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  433 

mechanic  tool,  the  commonest  and  most  indispensable  implements 
of  agriculture,  might  remind  one  of  the  school-boy's  second  stage 
in  metrical  composition,  in  which  his  exercise  is  to  contain  sense, 
but  he  is  allowed  to  eke  out  the  scanning  by  the  interposition, 
here  and  there,  of  an  equal  quantity  of  nonsense.  And  even  in 
the  existing  height  of  national  civilization,  how  many  individuals 
may  there  not  be  found,  for  whose  senses  the  non-essential  so 
preponderates,  that  though  they  may  have  lived  the  greater  part 
of  their  lives  in  the  country,  yet,  with  some  exceptions  for  the 
products  of  their  own  flower  and  kitchen  garden,  all  the  names  in 
the  Index  to  Withering' s  Botany,  are  superseded  for  them  by  the 
one  name,  a  weed!  "It  is  only  a  iveed  /"  And  if  this  indiffer- 
ence stopt  here,  and  this  particular  ignorance  were  regarded  as 
the  disease,  it  would  be  sickly  to  complain  of  it.  But  it  is  as  a 
symptom  that  it  excites  regret — it  is  that,  except  only  the  pot- 
herbs of  lucre,  and  the  barren  double-flowers  of  vanity,  their  own 
noblest  faculties  both  of  thought  and  action,  are  but  weeds — in 
which,  should  sickness  or  misfortune  wreck  them  on  the  desert 
island  of  their  own  mind,  they  would  either  not  think  of  seeking, 
or  be  ignorant  how  to  find,  nourishment  or  medicine.  As  it  is 
rrood  to  be  provided  with  work  for  rainy  days,  Winter  industry  is 
the  best  cheerer  of  winter  gloom,  and  fire-side  contrivances  for 
summer  use,  bring  summer  sunshine  and  a  genial  inner-warmth, 
which  the  friendly  heartli-blaze  may  conspire  with,  but  can  not 
bestow  or  compensate. 

A  splenetic  friend  of  mine,  who  was  fond  of  outraging  a  truth 
by  some  whimsical  hyperbole,  in  his  way  of  expressing  it,  gravely 
gave  it  out  as  his  opinion,  that  beauty  and  genius  were  but  dis- 
eases of  the  consumptive  and  scrofulous  order.  He  would  not 
carry  it  further ;  but  yet,  he  must  say,  that  he  had  observed  that 
very  good  people,  persons  of  unusual  virtue  and  benevolence,  were 
in  general  afflicted  with  weak  and  restless  nerves  !  After  yield- 
ing him  the  expected  laugh  for  the  oddity  of  the  remark,  I  re- 
minded him,  that  if  his  position  meant  any  thing,  the  converse 
must  be  true,  and  we  ought  to  have  Helens,  Medicean  Venuses. 
Shakspeares,  Raphaels,  Howards,  Clarksons,  and  Wilberforces  by 
thousands ;  and  the  assemblies  and  pump-rooms  at  Bath,  Har- 
rowgate,  and  Cheltenham,  rival  the  co?iversazioni  in  the  Elysian 
Fields.  Since  then,  however,  I  have  often  recurred  to  the  portion 
of  truth,  that  lay  at  the  bottom  of  my  friend's  conceit.     It  can 

VOL.  IV.  T 


434  SELECTION  FROM  MR.   COLERIDGE'S 

not  be  denied,  that  ill  health,  in  a  degree  below  direct  pain,  yet 
distressfully  affecting  the  sensations,  and  depressing  the  animal 
spirits,  and  thus  leaving  the  nervous  system  too  sensitive  to  pass 
into  the  ordinary  state  of  feeling,  and  forcing  us  to  live  in  alter- 
nating positives*  is  a  hot-bed  for  whatever  germs,  and  tenden- 
cies, whether  in  head  or  heart,  have  been  planted  there  independ- 
ently. 

Surely,  there  is  nothing  fanciful  in  considering  this  as  a  provi- 
dential provision,  and  as  one  of  the  countless  proofs,  that  we  are 
most  benignly,  as  well  as  wonderfully,  constructed  !  The  cutting 
and  irritating  grain  of  sand,  which  by  accident  or  incaution  has 
got  within  the  shell,  incites  the  living  inmate  to  secrete  from  its 
own  resources  the  means  of  coating  the  intrusive  substance.  And 
is  it  not,  or  may  it  not  be,  even  so,  with  the  irregularities  and 
unevennesses  of  health  and  fortune  in  our  own  case  ?  We,  too, 
may  turn  diseases  into  pearls.  The  means  and  materials  are  within 
ourselves  ;  and  the  process  is  easily  understood.  By  a  law  com- 
mon to  all  animal  life,  we  are  incapable  of  attending  for  any  con- 
tinuance to  an  object,  the  parts  of  which  are  indistinguishable 
from  each  oiher,  or  to  a  series,  where  the  successive  links  are 
only  numerically  different.  Nay,  the  more  broken  and  irritating 
(as,  for  instance,  the  fractious  noise  of  the  dashing  of  a  lake  on 
its  border,  comparing  with  the  swell  of  the  sea  on  a  calm  even- 
ing), the  more  quickly  does  it  exhaust  our  power  of  noticing  it. 
The  tooth-ache,  where  the  suffering  is  not  extreme,  often  finds  its 
speediest  cure  in  the  silent  pillow  ;  and  gradually  destroys  our  at- 
tention to  itself  by  preventing  us  from  attending  to  any  thing  else. 

*  Perhaps  it  confirms  while  it  limits  this  theory,  that  it  is  chiefly  verified 
in  men  whose  genius  and  pursuits  are  eminently  subjective,  where  the  mind 
is  intensely  watchful  of  its  own  acts  and  shapings,  thinks,  while  it  feels,  in 
order  to  understand,  and  then  to  generalize  that  feeling ;  above  all,  where 
all  the  powers  of  the  mind  are  called  into  action,  simultaneously,  and  yet 
severally,  while  in  men  of  equal,  and  perhaps  deservedly  equal  celebrity, 
whose  pursuits  are  objective  and  universal,  demanding  the  energies  of  at- 
tention and  abstraction,  as  in  mechanics,  mathematics,  and  all  departments 
of  physics  and  physiology,  the  very  contrary  would  seem  to  be  exemplified. 
Shakspeare  died  at  52,  and  probably  of  a  decline ;  and  in  one  of  his  tonnets 
he  speaks  of  himself  as  gray  and  prematurely  old :  and  Milton,  who  suffered 
from  infancy  those  intense  headaches  which  ended  in  blindness,  insinuates 
that  he  was  free  from  pain,  or  the  anticipation  of  pain.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Newtons  and  Leibnitzes  have,-  in  general,  been  not  only  long-lived,  but 
men  of  robust  health. 


LITERARY   CORRESPONDENCE.  435 

From  the  same  cause,  many  a  lonely  patient  listens  to  his  moans, 
till  he  forgets  the  pain  that  occasioned  them.  The  attention  at- 
tenuates, as  its  sphere  contracts.  But  this  it  does  even  to  a  point, 
where  the  person's  own  state  of  feeling,  or  any  particular  set  of 
bodily  sensations,  are  the  direct  object.  The  slender  thread  wind- 
ing  in  narrower  and  narrower  circles  round  its  source  and  centre, 
ends  at  length  in  a  chrysalis,  a  dormitory  within  which  the  spin- 
ner undresses  himself  in  his  sleep,  soon  to  come  forth  quite  a  new 
creature. 

So  it  is  in  the  slighter  cases  of  suffering,  where  suspension  is 
extinction,  or  followed  by  long  intervals  of  ease.  But  where  the 
unsubdued  causes  are  ever  on  the  watch  to  renew  the  pain,  that 
thus  forces  our  attention  in  upon  ourselves,  the  same  barrenness 
and  monotony  of  the  object  that  in  minor  grievances  lulled  the 
mind  into  oblivion,  now  goads  it  into  action  by  the  restlessness 
and  natural  impatience  of  vacancy.  "We  can  not  perhaps  divert 
the  attention ;  our  feelings  will  still  form  the  main  subject  of  our 
thoughts.  But  something  is  already  gained,  if,  instead  of  at- 
tending to  our  sensations,  we  begin  to  think  of  them.  But  in 
order  to  this,  we  must  reflect  on  these  thoughts — or  the  same 
sameness  will  soon  sink  them  down  into  mere  feeling.  And  in 
order  to  sustain  the  act  of  reflection  on  our  thoughts,  we  are 
obliged  more  and  more  to  compare  and  generalize  them,  a  process 
that  to  a  certain  extent  implies,  and  in  a  still  greater  degree  ex- 
cites and  introduces  the  act  and  power  of  abstracting  the  thoughts 
and  images  from  their  original  cause,  and  of  reflecting  on  them 
with  less  and  less  reference  to  the  individual  suffering  that  had 
been  their  first  subject.  The  vis  medicatrix  of  Nature  is  at 
work  for  us  in  all  our  faculties  and  habits,  the  associate,  repro- 
ductive, comparative,  and  combinatory. 

That  this  source  of  consolation  and  support  may  be  equally  in 
your  power  as  in  mine,  but  that  you  may  never  have  occasion  to 
feel  equally  grateful  for  it,  as  I  have,  and  do  in  body  and  estate, 
is  the  fervent  wish  of 

Your  affectionate 

S.  T.  Coleridge. 


486  HISTORIE  AND   GESTS  OF  MAXILIAN. 


FROM  BLACKWOOD'S  EDINBURGH  MAGAZINE,  Jan.  1822. 

Sundry 

Select  Chapters 

From  the  Book  of  the 

too  iDorlbs, 

Translated  from  the  Ori- 
ginal Esoteric  into  the 
Language  of  the 
Berber  Land : 
Comprising   the    Historie   and    Gests 
of  MAXILIAN,  agnominated 

Cosmencephaltjs  and  a  (Eonsilt- 
(German  of  SATYRANE,  the  Ido- 

loclast    a    very    true    Novel 

founded  on  Acts,  aptly  divided 
and  diversely  digested  into  JFjlttC©, 
iFligljtS,  Stations  (or  Landing-places) 

irloor©    and   Stories  complete 

in  Numeris,  more  or  less. 

Nota  Bene. — By  default  of  the  decipherer,  we  are  forced  to 
leave  the  blank  space  before  "  Numeris"  unfilled  ;  a  part  of  the 
work,  we  fear,  still  remaining  in  the  (DttCCflljCllic  character,  a 
sort  of  Sans-Script,  much  used,  we  understand,  by  adepts  in  the 
occult  sciences,  as  likewise  for  promissory  notes.  We  should  also 
apologize  for  the  indiscretion  of  our  author  in  his  epistolary  preface 
(seduced  by  the  wish  of  killing  two  birds  with  one  stone),  in  shut- 
ting up  vis  a  vis,  as  it  were,  so  respectable  and  comprehensive 
(not  to  say  sy nodical,)  a  personage  as  The  Reader  with  Dick 
Proof,  corrector — of  what  press,  we  know  not,  unless,  as  we 
grievously  suspect,  he  is  in  the  employ  of  Messrs.  Dash,  Asterisk, 
Anon,  and  Company.  Nor  is  this  all ;  this  impropriety  being 
aggravated  by  sundry  passages,  exclusively  relating  and  addressed 
to  this  Mr.  Proof,  which  have  an  effect  on  the  series  of  thoughts 
common  to  both  the  parties,  not  much  unlike  that,  which  a  pa- 
renthesis or  two  of  links,  made  of  dandelion  stems,  might  be  sup- 
posed to  produce  in  my  Lord  Mayor  or  Mr.  Sheriffs  gold  chain 
In  one  flagrant  instance,  with  which  the  first  paragraph  in  the 


HISTORIE   AND   GESTS   OF   MAXILIAJNT.  437 

MSS.  concluded,  we  have,  by  virtue  of  our  editorial  prerogative, 

degraded  the  passage  to  the  place  and  condition  of  a  Note. Ed- 

ttor. 

Motto.* 

"  How  wishedly  will  some  pity  the  case  of  Argalus  and  Parthenia,  the 
patience  of  Gryseld  iu  Chaucer,  the  misery  and  troublesome  adventures  of 
the  phanatic  {phrenetic  ?)  lovers  in  Cleopatra,  Cassandra,  Amadis  de  GauL 
Sidney,  and  such  like  1  Yet  all  these  are  as  mere  romantic  as  Rabelais  his 
Garagantua.  And  yet  with  an  unmoved  apprehension,  can  peruse  the  very 
dolorous  and  lamentable  murder  of  Milcolumb  the  First,  the  cutting  off  the 
head  of  good  King  Alpinus,  the  poisoning  of  Fergusius  the  Third  by  his 
own  queen,  and  the  throat-cutting  of  King  Fethelmachus  by  a  fiddler  !  nay, 
and  moreover,  even  the  martyrdom  of  old  Queen  Ketaban  in  Persia,  the 
stabbing  of  Henry  Fourth  in  France,  the  sacrilegious  poisoning  of  Emperor 
Henry  Seventh  in  Italy,  the  miserable  death  of  Mauricius  the  Emperor, 
with  a  wife  and  five  children,  by  wicked  Phocas, — can  read,  I  say,  these  and 
the  like  fatal  passages,  recorded  by  holy  fathers  and  grave  chroniclers,  with 
less  pity  and  compassion  than  the  shallow  loves  of  Romeo  for  his  Juliet  in 
Shakspeare — his  deplorable  tragedies,  or  shun  the  pitiful  wanderings  of 
Lady  Una  in  search  of  her  stray  Red-cross,  in  Master  Spenser  his  quaint 
rhymes.  Yea,  the  famous  doings,  and  grievous  sufferings  of  our  own 
anointed  kings,  may  be  far  outrivalled  in  some  men's  minds  by  the  hardships 
of  some  enchanted  innamorato  in  Ariosto,  Parismus,  or  the  two  Palmerins* 

Foulis's  History  of  the  Wicked  Plots  and  Conspiracies,  &c. 

Motto  II. 

"  Pray,  why  is  it  that  people  say  that  men  are  not  such  fools  now-a-dayt 
as  they  were  in  the  days  of  yore  ?  I  would  fain  know,  whether  you  would 
have  us  understand  by  this  same  saying,  as  indeed  you  logically  may,  thai 
formerly  men  were  fools,  and  in  this  generation  are  grown  wise.  How 
many  and  what  dispositions  made  them  fools  ?  How  many,  and  what  dis 
positions  were  wanting  to  make  'em  wise  ?  Why  were  those  fools  ?  How 
should  these  be  wise  ?  Pray,  how  came  you  to  know  that  men  were  for- 
merly fools  ?  How  did  you  find  that  they  are  now  wise  ?  Who  made  them 
fools  ?  Who  in  Heaven's  name  made  them  wise  ?  Who  d'ye  think  are  most, 
those  that  loved  mankind  foolish,  or  those  that  love  it  wise  ?  How  long  has 
it  been  wise?  How  long  otherwise?  Whence  proceeded  the  foregoing 
folly  ?  Whence  the  following  wisdom  ?  "Why  did  the  old  folly  end  now  and 
no  later  ?  Why  did  the  modern  wisdom  begin  now  and  no  sooner  ?  What 
were  we  the  worse  for  the  former  folly  ?  What  the  better  for  the  succeed 
ing  wisdom  ?  How  should  the  ancient  folly  have  come  to  nothing  ?  How 
should  this  same  new  wisdom  be  started  up  and  established  ?  Now  answer 
me,  an't  please  you."  Francis  Rabelais'  Preface  to  his  Fifth  Book. 

*  Which  Posterity  is  requested  to  reprint  at  the  back  of  the  title-page, 
for  the  present,  Quo'  North,  quo'  Blackwood  quo'  concessere  Columncc. 


438  HISTORIE   AND   GESTS   OF   MAXILIAN. 

EPISTLE  PREMONITORY  FOR  THE  READER; 

BUT   COXTRA-iviON  LTURV   AND   IX   RKI'LY    TO   DICK   PROOF,    CORRECTOR. 

Of  the  sundry  sorts  of  vice,  Richard,  that  obtain  in  this  sinful 
world,  one  of  the  most  troublesome  is  advice,  and  no  less  an  an- 
noyance to  my  feelings,  than  a  pun  is  to  thine.  "  Lay  your  scetie 
further  off!  !"  "Was  ever  historian  before  affronted  by  so  wild  a 
suggestion  ?  If,  indeed,  the  moods,  measures,  and  events  of  the 
last  six  years,  insular  and  continental,  or  the  like  of  that,  had  been 
the  title  and  subject-matter  of  the  work;  and  you  had  then  ad- 
vised the  transfer  of  the  scene  to  Siam  and  Borneo,  or  to  Abys- 
sinia and  the  Isle  of  Ormus — there  would  be  something  to  say  for 
it,  verisimilitudinis  causa,  or  on  the  ground  of  lessening  the  im- 
probability of  the  narrative.  But  in  the  history  of  Maxilian  ! — . 
Why,  the  locality,  man,  is  an  essential  part  of  the  a  priori  evi- 
dence of  its  truth  !     *     * 

In  a  biographical  work,*  the  properties  of  place  are  indispen- 
sable, Dick.  To  prove  this,  you  need  only  change  the  scene  in 
the  History  of  Rob  Roy  from  the  precipices  of  Ben  Lomond,  and 
the  glens  and  inlets  of  the  Trossacs  (the  Trossacs  worthy  to  have 
made  a  W.  S.  but  that  a  W.  S.  is  only  of  God's  making,  "  nasci 
tut  non  fit")  to  Snow-hill,  Breckneck  Stairs,  or  Little  Hell  in 
Westminster — by  going  to  which  last-named  place,  Dick,  when 

we  were  at  the school,  you  evaded  the  guilt  of  forswearing 

for  telling  of  me  to  our  master,  after  you  had  sworn  that  you 

would  go ,  if  you  did — well  knowing  wdiere  you  meant  me 

to  understand  you,  and  where  in  honor  you  ought  to  have  gone — 
but  this  may  be  mended  in  time. 

And  lay  the  time  further  back  !     But  why,  Richard  ?  I 

pray  thee .  tell  me  why  ?  The  present,  you  reply,  is  not  the 
age  of  the  supernatural.  Well,  and  if  I  admit,  that  the  age 
at  present  is  so  fully  attached  to  the  unnatural  in  taste, 
the  prseternatural  in  life,  and  the  contra-natural  in  philosophy, 

*  In  biography,  which,  by  the  hi-,  reminds  me  of  a  rejoinder  made  to 
me,  nigh  30  years  ago,  by  Parsons  the  Bookseller,  on  my  objecting  to  sun- 
dry anecdotes  in  a  MS.  Life,  that  did  more  credit  to  the  wit  and  invention 
of  the  author,  than  to  his  honesty  and  veracity.  "  In  a  professed  biogra- 
phy, Mr.  P."  quoth  I,  pleadingly,  and  somewhat  syllabically. — "  Biography, 
sir,"  interrupted  he,  "  &7/ography  is  what  I  want." 


EPISTLE   PKEMONITORY.  489 

as  to  have  little  room  left  for  the  supernatural — yet  what  is  this 
to  the  purpose  ?  I  can  not  antedate  the  highly  respectable  per- 
sonage, into  whose  company  I  have  presumed  to  bring  you — I 
may  make  the  reader,  sleep,  but  I  can  not  make  him  one  of  the 
Seven  Sleepers,  to  awake  at  my  request  for  the  first  time  since  he 
fell  into  his  long  nap  over  the  Golden  Legend,  or  the  Vision  of 
Alberic  !  Or  does  the  reader,  thinkest  thou,  believe  that  witch 
and  wizard,  gnome,  nymph,  sylph,  and  salamander,  did  exist  in 
those  days  ;  but  that,  like  the  mammoth  and  megatherim,  the 
race  is  extinct  ?  Will  he  accept  as  fossils,  what  he  would  reject 
as  specimens  fresh  caught — herein  differing  widely  from  the  old 
woman,  who,  as  the  things  were  said  to  have  happened  so  far 
off  and  so  long  ago,  hoped  in  God's  mercy,  there  was  not  a  word 
of  truth  in  them  ?  Thou  mayest  think  this,  Richard,  but  I  will 
neither  affront  the  reader  by  attributing  to  him  a  faith  so  depend- 
ent on  dates,  nor  myself,  whose  history  is  a  concave  mirror,  not  a 
glass-case  of  mummies,  stuffed  skins  of  defunct  monsters,  and  the 
anomalous  accidents  of  nature. 

Thus,  Richard,  might  I  multiply  thy  objection,  but  that  I  detest 
the  cui  bono,  when  it  is  to  be  a  substitute  for  the  quid  veri.  Nor 
will  I  stop  at  present  to  discuss  thy  insinuation  against  the  com- 
parative wisdom  of  the  sires  of  our  great-grandsires,  though  at 
some  future  time  I  would  fain  hear  thy  answers  to  the  doubts  and 
queries  in  my  second  motto,  originally  started  by  Master  Rabelais, 
in  that  model  of  true  and  perpetual  history,  the  Travels  of  Gara- 
gantua  and  his  friends. 

Without  condescending  to  non-suit  you  by  the  flaivs  in  your 
indictment,  I  assert  the  peculiar  fitness  of  this  age,  in  which,  by 
way  of  compromising  the  claims  of  memory  and  hope,  the  rights 
both  of  its  senior  and  of  its  junior  members,  I  comprise  the  inter- 
val from  1770  to  1870. 

An  adventurous  position,  but  for  which  the  age,  I  trust,  will 
be  "my  good  masters" — the  more  so,  that  I  must  forego  one 
main  help  towards  establishing  the  characteristic  epithets  right- 
fully appertaining  to  its  emblazonment — namely,  an  expose  of  its 
own  notions,  of  its  own  morals  and  philosophy.  But  Truth,  I 
remember,  is  reported  to  have  already  lost  her  front  teeth  (dentes 
incisores  et  prehensiles)  by  barking  too  close  at  the  heels  of  the 
restive  fashion  :  a  second  blow  might  leave  her  blind  as  well  as 
toothless      Besides,  a  word  in  your  ear,  Richard  Proof,  I  do  not 


440  H1STORIE   AND   GESTS  OF  MAX1LIAN. 

half  tru--t  you.  I  mean,  therefore,  to  follow  Petrarch's*  exam 
pie,  and  confine  my  confidence  on  these  points  to  a  few  deal 
friends  and  revered  benefactors,  to  whom  I  am  in  the  habit  of 
opening-  out  my  inner  man  in  the  world  of  spirits — a  world  which 
the  eyes  of  "  the  profane  vulgar"  would  probably  mistake  for  a 
garret  floored  and  wainscoted  with  old  books  ;  tattered  folios,  to 
wit,  and  massive  quartos  in  no  better  plight.  For  the  due  nutri- 
ment, however,  of  scorn  and  vanity — which  are  in  fact  much  the 
same  ;  for  contempt  is  nothing  but  egotism  turned  sour — for  the 
requisite  supply,  I  say,  of  our  social  wants  (Reviews,  Anecdotes 
of  Living  Authors,  Table-talk,  and  such-like  provender),  it  will 
suffice  if  I  hereby  confess,  that  with  rare  exceptions  these  friends 
of  mine  were  all  born  and  bred  before  the  birth  of  Common 
Sense  by  the  obstetric  skill  of  Mr.  Locke,  nay,  prior  to  the  first 
creation  of  intellectual  Light  in  the  person  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
— which  latter  event  (we  have  Mr.  Pope's  positive  assurance  of 
the  fact)  may  account  for  its  universal  and  equable  diffusion  at 
present,  the  Light  not  having  had  time  to  collect  itself  into  indi- 
vidual luminaries,  the  future  suns,  moons,  and  stars  of  the  mun- 
dus  intelligibilis.  This,  however,  may  be  hoped  for  on  or 
soon  after  the  year  1870,  which,  if  my  memory  does  not  fail  me, 
is  the  date  aiwcalyptically  deduced  by  the  Reverend  G.  S.  Faber, 
for  the  commencement  of  the  Millennium. 

But  though  my  prudential  reserve  on  these  points  must  sub- 
tract from  my  forces  numerically,  this  does  not  abate  my  reliance 
on  the  sufficing  strength  of  those  that  remain.  No  !  with  confi- 
dence and  secular  pride  I  affirm,  there  is  no  age  you  could  sug- 
gest, the  characteristic  of  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  present 
— that  we  are  the  quintessence  of  all  past  ages,  rather  than  an 
age  of  our  own.     You  recommend,  you  say,  the  Dark  Ages  ;  and 

*  The  passage  here  alluded  to,  I  should,  as  an  elevated  strain  of  elo- 
quence warm  from  the  heart  of  a  great  and  good  man,  compare  to  any  pas- 
gage  of  equal  length  in  Cicero.  I  have  not  the  folio  edition  of  Petrarch's 
works  by  me  (by-the-bye,  the  worst  printed  book  in  respect  of  blunders  I 
know  of,  not  excepting  even  Anderson's  British  Poets)  and  can  not  therefore 
give  any  particular  reference.  But  it  is  my  purpose  to  offer  you  some  re- 
marks on  the  Latin  Works  of  Petrarch,  with  a  few  selections,  at  a  future 
opportunity.  It  is  pleasing  to  contemplate  in  this  illustrious  man,  at  once 
the  benefactor  of  his  own  times,  and  the  delight  of  the  succeeding,  and 
working  on  his  contemporaries  most  beneficially  by  that  portion  of  hii 
works,  which  is  least  in  account  with  his  posterity. — S.  T.  C. 


EPISTLE   PREMONITORY.  44] 

that  the  present  boasts  to  be  the  contrary.  Indeed  ?  I  appeal 
then  to  the  oracle  that  pronounces  Socrates  the  most  enlightened 
of  men,  because  he  professed  himself  to  be  in  the  dark.  The 
converse,  and  the  necessary  truth  of  the  converse,  are  alike  ob- 
vious :  besides,  as  already  hinted,  in  time  all  light  must  needs  be 
in  the  dark,  as  having  neither  reflection  nor  absorption  ;  yet  may, 
nevertheless,  retain  its  prenomen  without  inconsistency,  by  a 
slight  change  in  the  last  syllable,  by  a  mere — for  "ed"  read 
:(ing."  For  whatever  scruples  may  arise  as  to  its  being  an  en- 
lightened age,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  an  enlightening 
one — an  era  of  enlighteners,  from  the  Gas  Light  Company  to  the 
dazzling  Illuminati  in  the  Temple  of  Reason — not  forgetting  the 
diffusers  of  light  from  the  Penny-Tract-Pedlary,  nor  the  number- 
less writers  of  the  small,  but  luminous  works  on  arts,  trades,  and 
sciences,  natural  history,  and  astronomy,  all  for  the  use  of  chil- 
dren from  three  years  old  to  seven,  interwoven  with,  their  own 
little  biographies  and  nursery  journals,  to  the  exclusion  of  Goody 
Two  Shoes,  as  favoring  superstition,  by  one  party  ;  and  of  Jack 
the  Giant-killer,  as  a  suspicious  parody  on  David  and  Goliah,  by 
the  other. 

Ear,  far  around,  where'er  my  eyeballs  stray, 
By  Lucifer  !  'tis  all  one  milky-way  I 

Or,  as  Propria  Qnce  Maribus,  speaking  {more  prophetico,  et  pro- 
leptice)  of  the  Irradiators  of  future  {i.  e.  our)  Times  long  ago  ob- 
served, they  are  common,  quite  a  common  thing  ! 

Sunt  commune  Parens.  Authorque ;  Infans,  Adolescens  ; 
Dux ;  Exlex  ;  bifrons ;  Bos,  Fur,  Sus  atque  Sacerdos. 

So  far,  at  least,  you  will  allow  me  to  have  made  out  my  posi 
tion.  But  if  by  a  dark  age  you  mean  an  age  concerning  which 
we  are  altogether  in  the  dark  ;  and  as,  in  applying  this  to  our 
own,  the  Subject  and  Object,  we  and  the  age  become  identical 
and  commutable  terms  ;  I  bid  adieu  to  all  reasoning  by  implica- 
tion, to  all  legerdemain  of  inferential  logic,  and  at  once  bring  no- 
torious facts  to  bear  out  my  assertion.  Could  Hecate  herself, 
churning  the  night-damps  for  an  eye-salve,  wish  for  an  age  more 
in  the  dark  respecting  its  own  character,  than  we  have  seen  ex 
emplified  in  our  next-door  neighbor,  the  Great  Nation,  when,  on 
the  bloodless  altar  of  Gallic  freedom,  she  took  the  oath  of  peace 
and  good-will  to  all  mankind,  and  abjured  all  conquests  but  those 


442  HISTORIE  AND   GESTS   OF  MAXILIAN. 

of  reason  ?  Or  in  the  millions  throughout  the  continent,  who  be- 
lieved her  ?  Or  than  m  the  two  component  parties  in  our  own 
illustrious  isle,  the  one  of  whom  hailed  her  revolution  as  "  a  stu- 
pendous monument  of  human  wisdom  and  human  happiness ;" 
and  the  other  calculated  on  its  speedy  overthrow  by  an  act  of 
bankruptcy,  to  be  brought  about  or  accelerated  by  a  speculation 
in  assignats,  corn,  and  Peruvian  bark  ?  Or  than  in  the  more  re- 
cent constitutional  genius  of  the  Peninsula — 

What  time  it  rose,  o'er-peering,  from  behind, 
The  mountainous  experience,  high  upheaped 
Of  Gallic  legislation — 

and  "  taught  by  others'  harms,"  a  very  ungallic  respect  for  the 
more  ancient  code,  vulgarly  called  the  Ten  Commandments,  left 
the  lands  as  it  lound  them,  content  with  excluding  their  owners 
— owners  of  four  parts  out  of  five,  at  least,  the  church  and  no- 
bility— from  all  share  in  their  representation  ?  Or  when  the 
same  genius,  the  emblem  and  vicegerent  of  the  present  age  in 
Spain,  poising  the  old  indigenous  loyalty  with  the  newly-imported 
state-craft,  secured  to  the  monarch  the  revenue  of  a  caliph,  with 
the  power  of  a  constable  ?  But  Piedmont !  but  Naples — the 
Neapolitans  !  the  age  of  patriotism,  the  firm,  the  disinterested — 
the  age  of  good  faith  and  hard  fighting — of  liberty  or  death  ! — 
yea,  and  the  age  of  newspapers  and  speeches  in  Britain,  France, 
and  Germany — the  uncorrupted  I  mean  (and  the  rest,  you  know, 
as  mere  sloughs,  rather  than  a  living  and  component  part,  need 
not  be  taken  into  the  calculation)- -were  of  the  same  opinion ! 
A.  dream  for  Momus  to  wake  out  of  with  laughing ! 

But  enough  !  You  are  convinced  on  this  point, — at  least  you 
retract  your  objection.  And  now  what  else  ?  Does  my  history 
require,  in  the  way  of  correspondency,  a  time  of  wonders,  a 
revolutionary  period  ?  Does  it  demand  a  nondescript  age  ? 
Should  it,  above  all  (as  I  myself  admit  that  it  should),  be  laid  in 
an  age  "without  a  name,"  and  which,  therefore,  it  will  be  char- 
ity in  me  to  christen  by  the  name  of  the  Polypus  ?  An  age, 
where  the  inmost  may  be  turned  outside — and  "  Inside  out  and 
outside  in,"  I  at  one  time  intended  for  the  title  of  my  history — 
where  the  very  tails,  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  independence,  shoot 
out  heads  of  their  own  ?  (Thanks,  with  three  times  three,  to 
Ellis    and  Trembley,  the  first  historiographers  of  the  Polypus 


EPISTLE   PREMONITORY,  443 

realm,  for  this  beautiful  emblem  and  natural  sanction  oi  the 
{Sovereignty  of  the  People  !)  All,  all  are  to  be  found  in  the 
age  we  live  in — whose  attributes  to  enumerate  would  exhaust 
the  epithets  of  an  Orphic  hymn,  and  beggar  the  Gradus  ad  Par- 
nassurn  ! — All,  all,  and  half  besides — the  feasibility  of  which  I 
first  learnt  during  the  last  war,  at  two  public  dinners  severally 
given,  one  by  Scottish,  and  the  other  by  Irish  patriots,  where 
each  assigned  to  their  countrymen  three  fourths  of  our  whole 
naval  and  military  success.  In  each  case,  a  priori,  the  thing 
was  possible,  nay,  probable  ;  as  each  meeting  the  assertion  passed 
nem.  con.  though  there  were  eye-witnesses,  if  not  pars-maximists 
present — and  both  were  so  much  in  earnest,  that  I  could  not  find 
it  in  my  heart  to  disbelieve  either.  But  this  is  a  digression.  Or 
it  may  be  printed  as  a  parenthesis.  All  close  thinkers,  you 
know,  are  apt  to  be  parenthetic. 

One  other  point,  and  I  conclude.  You  are  a  mighty  man  for 
parallel  passages,  Dick  !  a  very  ferret  for  hunting  out  the  pedi 
gree  and  true  parentage  of  a  thought,  phrase,  or  image.  So  far 
from  believing  in  equivocal  generation,  or  giving  credit  to  any 
idea  as  an  Autochthon,  i.  e.  as  self-sprung  out  of  the  individual 
brain,  or  natale  solum,  whence  (like  Battersea  Cabbages,  Dur- 
ham mustard,  Stilton  cheese,  &c.)  it  took  its  market  name,  I  verily 
suspect  you  of  the  heresy  of  the  Prse-Adamites  !  Nay,  I  would 
lay  a  wager  that  the  Thesis  for  your  Doctor's  Degree,  should  you 
ever  descend  from  your  correctorship  of  tyjrical  errata  to  that  of 
misprints  in  the  substance,  would  be  :  quod  fontes  sint  nullibi. 
In  self-defence,  therefore,  by  warrantable  anticipation, — a  preg- 
nant principle,  Richard  !  by  virtue  of  which  (as  you  yourself 
urged  at  the  time)  the  demagogues  that  threw  open  the  election 
of  the  Mayor  of  Garrett,  hitherto  vested  in  the  blackguards  of 
Brentford  exclusively,  to  the  blackguards  of  the  country  at  large, 
exposed  us  to  an  invasion  from  the  aristocracies  of  Tunis  and 
Algiers  !  N.B.  Clarendon  and  the  Quarterly  are  of  the  same 
opinion — prospectively,  I  say,  for  informers,  and  informatively  for 
the  reader,  I  make  known  the  following : 

Some  ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  as  the  Vassals  of  the  Sun,  i.  e. 
the  Bodies,  count  their  time,  being  in  the  world  of  spirits,  ag 
above-mentioned,  and  in  the  Parnassian  quarter,  in  literary  chit- 
chat with  Lucian,  Aristophanes,  Swift,  Rabelais,  and  Moliere, 
over  a  glass  of  green  gooseberry  wine  (since  the  departure  of  the 


444  HISTORIE   AND  GESTS   OF  MAXILIAN. 

last-named  spirit,  articles  of  French  produce  have  been  declared 
contraband  in  the  spiritual  Parnassia) — I  read  them  a  rough  pre- 
existent,  or  as  we  say  here,  copy,  of  Maxilian.  When  who  should 
"be  standing  behind  my  chair,  and  peeping  over  my  shoulder  (I 
had  a  glimpse  of  his  face  when  it  was  too  late,  and  I  never  saw 
a  more  Cervantic  one),  but  a  spirit  from  Thought-land  (North 
Germany  I  should  say),  who,  it  seems,  had  taken  a  trip  thither, 
during  the  furlough  of  a  magnetic  crisis,  into  which  his  Larva 

had  been  thrown  by Nic,  senior,  M.D.*  and  a  Mesmerist 

still  in  great  practice.  Well  !  there  would  have  been  no  harm 
in  this,  for  in  such  cases  it  was  well  known,  that  the  spirit,  on  its 
return  to  the  body,  used  to  forget  all  that  had  happened  to  it  dur- 
ing its  absence,  and  became  as  ignorant  of  all  the  wondrous  things 
it  had  seen,  said,  heard  and  done,  as  Balaam's  ass.  rivexai  <5'«u 
ovoq  6  ovog  £$ayyeli'c6{UEPog.  But  unluckily,  and  only  a  few  months 
before,  Mr.  Van  Ghert  (who,  as  privy  counsellor  to  the  King  of 
the  Netherlands,  ought  to  have  known  better)  had,  by  metaphy- 
sical skill,  discovered  the  means  of  so  softening  the  wax  tablet  in 
the  patient's  cranium,  that  it  not  only  received,  but  retained,  the 
impression  from  the  movements  of  the  soul,  during  her  trance,  re- 
suggesting  them  to  the  patient  sooner  or  later,  sometimes  as 
dreams,  and  sometimes  as  original  fancies.  Thus  it  chanced, 
that  the  great  idea,  and  too  many  of  the  sub-ideas,  of  my  ideal 

work  awoke,  in  the  consciousness  of  this  Prussian  or  Saxon, 

Frederic  Miller  is  the  name,  he  goes  by soon  after  the  return 

of  the  spirit  to  its  old  chambers  in  his  brain.  Alas  !  my  unfortu- 
nate intimacy  with  a  certain  well-known  "  Thief  of  Time,"  for 
which  my  originality  had  suffered  on  more  than  one  former  oc- 
casion, was  part  in  fault  !  But,  be  this  as  it  may,  so  it  chanced, 
however,  that  before  I  had  put  a  single  line  on  paper  (my  time 
being,  indeed,  occupied  in  determining  which  of  ten  or  twelve 
pre-existents  I  should  transcribe  first)  out  came  the  surreptitious 
duplicate,  with  such  changes  in  names,  scene  of  action,  thought, 

*  See  "  Arckiv  des  tliierisehen  Magnetismus,"  edited  by  Professor  Eschen- 
miayer  and  Co.  I  mentioned  one  of  Dr.  Nic's  cases,  with  a  few  of  Doctors 
kieser's  and  Basse's,  and  of  Mr.  Van  Ghert's,  to  Lemuel  Gulliver ;  but  I 
found  him  strangely  incredulous.  He  (he  said)  had  never  seen  any  thing 
like  it.  But  what  is  that  to  the  ourpose  ?  What  does  any  one  man's  ex- 
perience go  for,  in  proving  a  negative  at  least  ?  I  could  not  even  learn 
from  him  that  he  had  ever  met  with  a  single  Meteorolithe,  or  sky-stcne,  on 
its  travels  from  the  volcanoes  of  Jupiter,  or  the  moon,  to  our  earth 


FLIGHT  I.  445 

images,  and  language,  as  the  previous  associations,  and  local  im 
pressions  of  the  unweeting  plagiarist  had  clothed  my  ideas  in 
But  what  I  take  most  to  heart,  it  so  nearly  concerning  the  credit 
of  Great  Britain,  is,  that  it  came  out  in  another  country,  and  in 
high  Dutch  !  I  foresee  what  my  anticipator's  compatriots  will  say 
— that  admitting  the  facts  as  here  related,  yet  the  Anselmus  is 
no  mere  transcript  or  version,  but  at  the  lowest  a  free  imitation 
of  the  Maxilian  :  or  rather  that  the  English  and  German  works 
are  like  two  paintings  by  different  masters  from  the  same  sketch, 
the  credit  of  which  sketch,  secundum  leges  et  consuetudines  mun- 
di  coi'puscularis,  must  be  assigned  to  the  said  Frederic  Miller  by 
all  incarnate  spirits,  held  at  this  present  time  in  their  se?ises,  and 
as  long  as  they  continue  therein  ;  but  which  I  shall  claim  to  my- 
self, if  ever  I  get  out  of  them.  And  so  farewell,  dear  Corrector  ! 
for  I  must  now  adjust  myself  to  retire  bowing,  face  or  frontispiece, 
towards  the  reader,  with  the  respect  due  to  so  impartial  and 
patient  an  Arbiter  from  the 

Author. 

MAXILIAN. 


It  was  on  a  Whitsunday  afternoon — the  clocks  striking  five, 
and  while  the  last  stroke  was  echoing  in  the  now  empty  churches 
— and  just  at  the  turn  of  one  of  the  open  streets  in  the  outskirts  of 
Dublin — that  a  young  man,  swinging  himself  round  the  corner, 
ran  full  butt  on  a  basket  of  cakes  and  apples,  which  an  old  bar- 
row-wife was  offering  for  sale  ;  and  with  such  force,  that  the  con- 
tents shot  abroad,  like  the  water-rays  of  a  trundled  mop,  and  fur- 
nished extempore — on  the  spur  of  the  occasion,  as  we  say — a  glo- 
rious scramble  to  the  suburban  youngsters,  that  were  there  making 
or  marring  this  double  holiday.  But  what  words  can  describe 
the  desperate  outburst,  the  blaze  of  sound,  into  which  the  beldam 
owner  of  the  wares  exploded  !  or  the  "  boil  and,  bubble"  of  abuse 
and  imprecation,  with  which  the  neighbor  gossips,  starting  from 
their  gingerbread  and  whiskey  stands,  and  clustering  round  him,, 
astounded  the  ears  and  senses  of  the  ill-starred  aggressor  !  a 
tangle-knot  of  adders,  with  all  its  heads  protruded  towards  him, 
would  not  have  been  more  terrific.  Heeling  with  surprise  and 
shame,  with  the  look  and  gesture  of  a  child,  that,  having  trHrVd 


446  SISTORIE  AND   GESTS   OF  MAXILIAN. 

till  it  was  giddy-blind,  is  now  trying  to  stop  itself,  he  held  out  hij 
purse,  which  the  grinning  scold  with  one  snatch  transferred  to  her 
own  pocket.  At  the  sight  of  this  peace-offering,  the  circle  opened 
and  made  way  for  the  young  man,  who  instantly  pursued  his 
course  with  as  much  celerity  as  the  fulness  of  the  street,  and  the 
dread  of  a  second  mishap,  would  permit.  The  flame  of  Irish 
wrath  soon  languishes  and  goes  out,  when  it  meets  with  no  fuel 
from  resistance.  The  rule  holds  true  in  general.  But  no  rule 
is  of  universal  application  ;  and  it  was  far  from  being  verified 
by  the  offended  principal  in  this  affray.  Unappe-ased,  or  calling 
in  her  fury  only  to  send  it  out  again  condensed  into-  hate,  the  im- 
placable beldam  hobbled  after  the  youth,  determined  that  though 
she  herself  could  not  keep  up  with  him,  yet  that  her  curses 
should,  as  long  at  least  as  her  throat  and  lungs  could  supply 
powder  for  their  projection.  Alternately  pushing  her  limbs  on- 
ward, and  stopping  not  so  much  to  pant  as  to  gain  a  fulcrum  for 
a  more  vehement  scream,  she  continued  to  pursue  her  victim  with 
"  vocal  shafts,"  as  Pindar  has  it,  or  w;  nolvog  eunQijodelg  i.  e. 
spitting  fire  like  a  wet  candle-wick,  as  Aristophanes  ! 

And  well  if  this  had  been  all — an  intemperance,  a  gust  of 
crazy  cankered  old  age,  not  worth  recording.  But,  alas  !  these 
jets  and  flashes  of  execration  no  sooner  reached  the  ears  of  the 
fugitive,  but  they  became  articulate  sentences,  the  fragments,  it 
seemed,  of  some  old  spell,  or  wicked  witch-rhyme  : — 

Ay !  run,  run,  run. 
Off  flesh,  off  bone  ! 
Thou  Satan's  son, 
Thou  Devil's  own ! 
Into  the  glass 


Pass 
The  glass !  the  glass, 
The  crystal  glass ! 


Though  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  this  transformation  ot 
sound,  like  the  burst  of  a  bomb,  did  not  take  effect  till  it  had 
reached  its  final  destination,  the  youth's  own  meatus  auditor  ius  ; 
and  that  for  others,  the  scold's  passionate  outcry  did  not  verbally 
differ  from  the  usual  outcries  of  a  scold  in  a  passion  :  yet  there 
was  a  something  in  the  yell  and  throttle  of  the  basket-woman's 
voice  so  horrific,  that  the  general  laugh,  which  had  spread  round 
at  the  young  man's  expense,  was   suspended.     The  passengers 


FLIGHT  I.  44 1 

halted,  as  wonder-struck  ;  and  when  they  moved  on,  there  waa 
a  general  murmur  of  disgust  and  aversion. 

The  student  Maxilian — for  he  it  was,  and  no  other,  who,  fol- 
lowing his  nose,  without  taking  counsel  of  his  eyes,  had  thus 
plunged  into  conflict  with  the  old  woman's  wares — though  he 
could  attach  no  sense  or  meaning  to  the  words  he  heard,  felt 
himself,  nevertheless,  seized  with  involuntary  terror,  and  quick- 
ened his  steps,  to  get  as  soon  as  possible  out  of  the  crowd,  who 
were  making  their  way  to  the  pleasure-gardens,  the  Vauxhall  of 
the  Irish  metropolis,  and  whose  looks  and  curiosity  converged  to- 
wards him.  His  anxious  zig-zag,  however,  marked  the  desire 
of  haste,  rather  than  its  attainment  :  and  still  as  he  pushed  and 
winded  through  the  press  of  the  various  gay  parties,  all  in  holi- 
day finery,  he  heard  a  whispering  and  murmuring,  "  The  poor 
young  man  !  Out  on  the  frantic  old  hag  !"  The  ominous  voice 
and  the  wicked  looks  which  the  beldam  seemed  to  project,  to- 
gether with  the  voice — and  we  are  all,  more  or  less,  superstitious 
respecting  looks — had  given  a  sort  of  sentimental  turn  to  this  lu- 
dicrous incident.  The  females  regarded  the  youth  with  increas- 
ing sympathy  :  and  in  his  well-formed  countenance  (to  which  tho 
expression  of  inward  distress  lent  an  additional  interest),  and  his 
athletic  growth,  they  found  an  apology,  and,  for  the  moment,  a 
compensation,  for  the  awkwardness  of  his  gait,  and  the  more 
than  most  unfashionable  cut  of  his  clothes. 

It  can  never  be  proved,  that  no  one  of  the  Seven  Sleepers  was 
a  tailor  by  trade  ;  neither  do  I  take  on  myself  to  demonstrate  the 
affirmative.  But  this  I  will  maintain,  that  a  tailor,  disenthralled 
from  a  trance  of  like  duration,  with  confused  and  fragmentary 
recollections  of  the  fashions  at  the  time  he  fell  asleep,  blended 
with  the  images  hastily  abstracted  from  the  dresses  that  passed 
before  his  eyes  when  he  first  reopened  them,  might,  by  dint  of 
conjecture,  have  come  as  near  to  a  modish  suit,  as  the  ambula- 
tory artist  had  done,  who  made  his  circuit  among  the  recesses 
of  Macgillicuddy's  Reeks,  and  for  whose  drapery  the  person  of 
our  luckless  student  did  at  this  present  time  perform  the  office 
of  Layman*     A  pepper-and-salt  frock,  that  might  be  taken  for 

*  The  jointed  image,  or  articulated  doll,  as  large,  in  some  instances,  as  a 
full-grown  man  or  woman,  which  artists  employ  for  the  arrangement  and 
probation  of  the  drapery  and  attitudes  of  the  figures  in  their  paintings,  ia 
called  Layman.    Postscript.     Previously  to  his  perusal  of  the  several  par 


448  HISTORIE  AND  GESTS  OF  MAXILIAN. 

a  greatcoat, — but  whether  docked,  or  only  outgrown,  was  open 
to  conjecture  ;  a  black  satin  waisvcoat,  with  deep  and  ample 
flaps,  rimmed  with  rose-color  embroidery  ;  green  plush  small- 
clothes, that  on  one  limb  formed  a  tight  compress  on  the  knee- 
joint,  and  on  the  other  buttoned  mid-way  round  the  calf  of  a 
manly  and  well-proportioned  leg.  Round  his  neck  a  frilled  or 
laced  collar  with  a  ribbon  round  it,  sufficiently  alien  indeed  from 
the  costume  below,  yet  the  only  article  in  the  inventory  and  sum 
total  of  his  attire  that  harmonized,  or,  as  our  painters  say,  was 
in  some  keeping — with  the  juvenile  bloom,  and  [mark,  gentle 
Reader  !  I  am  going  to  raise  my  style  an  octave  or  more] — and 
ardent  simplicity  of  his  face  ;  or  with  the  auburn  ringlets  that 
tempered  the  lustre  of  his  ample  forehead  !  like  those  fleecy 
cloudlets  of  amber,  which  no  writer  or  lover  of  sonnets  but  must 
some  time  or  other,  in  some  sweet  Midsummer  Night's  Dream 
of  poetic  or  sentimental  sky-gazing,  have  seen  astray  on  the  sil- 
ver brow  of  the  celestial  Dian  !  Or  as  I^nyself,  once  on  a  time, 
in  a  dell  of  lazy  Sicily,  down  a  stony  side^  of  which  a  wild  vine 
was  creeping  tortuous,  saw  the  tendrils  of  the  vine  pencilling 
with  delicate  shadows  the  brow  of  a  projecting  rock  of  purest 
Alabaster,  that  here  gleamed  through  from  behind  the  tendrils, 
and  here  glittered  as  the  interspace. 

Yes,  gentle  Reader  ! — the  diction,  similes,  and  metaphors  of 

ticulars  of  the  student's  tout-ensem  ble,,  lam  anxious  to  inform  the  reader, 
that  having  looked  somewhat  more  needfully  into  my  documents,  I  more 
than  suspect  that  the  piece,  since  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  Sartor  of 
Macgillicuddy,  had  been  most  licentiously  interpolated  by  genii  of  most 
mischievous  propensities — the  boni  socii  of  the  Etruscan  aud  Samothracian 
breed  ;  the  "  Robin  Good  Fellows"  of  England  ;  the  "  (*ood  Neighbors"  of 
North  Britain ;  and  the  "  Practical  Jokers"  of  all  places,  but  of  special  fre- 
quency in  clubs,  schools,  and  universities. 

*  The  author  asks  credit  for  his  having,  here  and  elsewhere,  resisted  the 
temptation  of  substituting  "whose"  for  "of  which" — the  misuse  of  the  said 
pronoun  relative  "  whose,"  where  the  antecedent  neither  is,  nor  is  meant  to 
be  represented  as,  personal  or  even  animal,  he  would  brand,  as  one  amoDg 
the  worst  of  those  mimicries  of  poetic  diction,  by  which  imbecile  writers 
fancy  they  elevate  their  prose — would,  but  that,  to  his  vexation,  he  meets 
with  it,  of  late,  in  the  compositions  of  men  that  least  of  all  need  such  arti- 
fices, and  who  ought  to  watch  over  the  purity  and  privileges  of  their  mother 
tongue  with  all  the  jealousy  of  high-priests  set  apart  by  nature  for  the  pon- 
tificate. Poor  as  our  language  is,  in  terminations  and  inflections  significant 
of  the  genders,  to  destroy  the  few  it  possesses  is  most  wrongful. 


FLIGHT  I.  449 

the  preceding  paragraph,  are  somewhat  motley  and  heterogene, 
I  am  myself  aware  of  it.  But  such  was  the  impression  it  was 
meant  to  leave.  A  harmony  that  neither  existed  in  the  original 
nor  is  to  be  found  in  any  portraiture  thereof,  presents  itself  in  the 
exact  correspondence  of  the  one  to  the  other.  My  friend  Panour- 
gos,  late  of  the  Poultry  Counter,  but  at  present  in  the  King's 
Bench,  a  descendant  of  the  Rabelaisean  Panurge,  but  with  a  trick 
of  Friar  John  in  his  composition — acted  on  this  principle.  He 
sent  an  old  coat  to  be  dyed  ;  the  dyer  brought  it  home  blue  and 
black  :  he  beat  the  dyer  black  and  blue  :  and  this,  he  justly  ob- 
served, produced  a  harmony.  Discordia  concors ! — the  motto, 
gentle  Reader  !  prefixed  by  the  masters  of  musical  counterpoint, 
to  the  gnarled  and  quarrelsome  notes  which  the  potent  fist  of  the 
Royal  Amazon,  our  English  Queen  Bess,  boxed  into  love  and  good 
neighborhood  on  her  own  virginals.  Besides,  I  wished  to  leave 
your  fancy  a  few  seconds  longer  in  the  tiring-room.  And  here 
she  comes  !  The  whole  figure  of  the  student — She  has  dressed 
the  character  to  a  hair. — You  have  it  now  complete  before  your 
mind's  eye,  as  if  she  had  caught  it  flying. 

And  in  fact,  with  something  like  the  feeling  of  one  flying  in 
his  sleep,  the  poor  youth  neither  stopped  nor  stayed,  till  he  had 
reached  and  passed  into  the  shade  of  the  alley  of  trees  that  leads 
to  the  gardens — his  original  destination,  as  he  sallied  forth  from 
his  own  unlightsome  rooms.  And  scarcely,  even  now,  did  he 
venture  to  look  up,  or  around  him.  The  eruption  from  the  bas- 
ket, the  air-dance  of  cakes  and  apples,  continued  still  before  his 
eyes.  In  the  sounds  of  distant  glee  he  heard  but  a  vibration  of 
the  inhuman  multitudinous  horse-laugh  {uvaqiQp.ov  yikao[ia)  at 
the  street  corner.  Yea,  the  restrained  -smile,  or  the  merry  glance 
of  pausing  or  passing  damsel,  were  but  a  dimmer  reflection  of 
the  beldam's  haggish  grin.  He  was  now  at  the  entrance  gate. 
Group  after  group,  all  in  holiday  attire,  streamed  forward.  The 
music  of  the  wind  instruments  sounded  from  the  gallery  ;  and 
louder  and  thicker  came  the  din  of  the  merry-makers  from  the 
walks,  alcoves,  and  saloon.  At  the  very  edge  of  the  rippling 
tide,  I  once  saw  a  bag-net  lying,  and  a  poor  fascinated  haddock 
with  its  neb  through  one  of  the  meshes  :  and  once  from  the  gar- 
rison at  Valette,  I  witnessed  a  bark  of  Greece,  a  goodly  Idriote, 
tall,  and  lustily  manned  ;  its  white  dazzling  cotton  sails  all  filled 
out  with  the  breeze,  and  even  now  gliding   into  the  grand  port 


450  HISTORIE  AND   GESTS  OF  MAXILIAN. 

(Porto  Grande),  forced  to  turn  about  and  beat  round  into  the 
sullen  harbor  of  quarantine. — Hapless  Maxilian  !  the  havens  of 
pleasure  have  their  quarantine,  and  repel  with  no  less  aversion 
the  plague  of  poverty.  The  Prattique  boat  hails,  and  where  is 
his  bill  of  health  ?  In  the  possession  of  the  Corsair.  Then  first 
he  recovered  his  thoughts  and  senses  sufficiently  to  remember 
that  he  had  given  away — to  comprehend  and  feel  the  whole 
weight  of  his  loss.  And  if  a  bitter  curse  on  his  malignant  star 
gave  a  wildness  to  the  vexation,  with  which  he  looked  upward, 

Let  us  not  blame  him  :  for  against  such  chances 
The  heartiest  strife  of  manhood  is  scarce  proof. 
We  may  read  constancy  and  fortitude 
To  other  souls — but  had  ourselves  been  struck, 
Even  in  the  height  and  heat  of  our  keen  wishing, 
It  might  have  made  our  heart-strings  jar,  like  his ! 

Old  Play. 

Hapless  Maxilian  !  hard  was  the  struggle  between  the  tears 
that  were  swelling  into  his  eyes  and  the  manly  shame  that  would 
fain  restrain  them.  Whitsunday  was  the  high  holiday  of  the  year 
for  him,  the  family  festival  from  which  he  had  counted  and  chroni- 
cled his  years  from  childhood  upwards.  With  this  vision  before 
him,  he  had  confined  himself  for  the  last  four  or  five  weeks  to 
those  feasts  of  hope  and  fancy,  from  which  the  guest  is  sure  to 
rise  with  an  improved  appetite :  and  yet  had  put  into  his  purse 
a  larger  proportion  of  his  scanty  allowance  than  was  consistent 
with  the  humblest  claims  of  the  months  ensuing.  But  the  Whit- 
sunday, the  alba  dies,  comes  but  once  a-year — to  keep  it,  to  give 
it  honor  due, — he  had  pinched  close,  and  worked  hard.  Yes,  he 
was  resolved  to  make  much  of  himself,  to  indulge  his  genius,  even 
to  a  bottle  of  claret, — a  plate  of  French  olives, — or  should  he  meet, 
as  was  not  improbable,  his  friend,  Hunshman,  the  Professor  of 
Languages — i.  e.  a  middle-aged  German,  who  taught  French  and 
Italian  :  excellent,  moreover,  in  pork,  hams,  and  sausages,  though 
the  anti-judaic  part  of  the  concern,  the  pork  shop,  was  ostensibly 
managed  by  Mrs.  Hunshman,  and  since  her  decease,  by  Miss 
Lusatia,  his  daughter — or  should  he  fall  in  with  the  Professor, 
and  the  fair  Lusatia,  why  then,  a  bowl  of  Arrack  punch  (it  is  the 
ladies'  favorite,  he  had  heard  the  Professor  say,  adding  with  a 
smile,  that  the  French  called  it  contradiction), — Yes,  a  bowl  of 
punch,  a  pipe — his  friend,  townsman  and  maternal  descendant 


FLIGHT  I.  451 

of  the  celebrated  Ja^ob  Behmen,  had  taught  him  to  smokes,  and 
was  teaching  him  Theosophy — coffee,  and  a  glass  of  Inniskillen  to, 
crown  the  solemnity.  In  this  broken  and  parenthetic  form  did 
the  bill  of  fare  ferment  in  the  anticipator's  brain  :  and  in  the 
same  form,  with  some  little  interpolation,  by  way  of  gloss,  for  the 
Reader's  information,  have  we,  sacrificing  elegance  of  style  to 
faith  of  History,  delivered  it. 

Maxilian  was  no  ready  accountant ;  but  he  had  acted  over  the 
whole  expenditure,  had  rehearsed  it  in  detail,  from  the  admission 
to  the  concluding  shilling  and  pence  thrown  down  with  an  im- 
counting  air  for  the  waiter.     Voluptuous  Youth  ! 

But,  ah  !  that  fatal  incursion  on  the  apple-basket — all  was 
lost !  The  brimming  cup  had  even  touched  his  lips — it  left  its 
froth  on  them,  when  it  was  dashed  down,  untasted,  from  his 
hand.  The  music,  the  gay  attires,  the  tripping  step  and  friendly 
nod  of  woman,  the  volunteer  service,  the  rewarding  smile — per- 
haps, the  permitted  pressure  of  the  hand  felt  warm  and  soft 
within  the  glove — all  shattered,  as  so  many  bubbles,  by  that  one 
malignant  shock  !  In  fits  and  irregular  pulses  of  locomotion,  hur- 
rying yet  lingering,  he  forced  himself  alongside  the  gate,  and  with 
many  a  turn,  heedless  whither  he  went,  if  only  he  left  the  haunts 
and  houses  of  men  behind  him,  he  reached  at  length  the  solitary 
banks  of  the  streamlet  that  pours  itself  into  the  bay  south  of  the 
Liffey.  Close  by  stood  the  rude  and  massy  fragment  of  an  inclo- 
sure,  or  rather  the  angle  where  the  walls  met  that  had  once  pro- 
tected a  now  deserted  garden, 

"  And  still  where  many  a  garden-flower  grew  wild." 

Here,  beneath  a  bushy  elder-tree,  that  had  shot  forth  from  the 
crumbling  ruin,  something  higher  than  midway  from  the  base,  he 
found  a  grassy  couch,  a  sofa  or  ottoman  of  sods,  overcrept  with 
wild-sage  and  camomile.  Of  all  his  proposed  enjoyments,  one 
only  remained,  the  present  of  his  friend,  itself  almost  a  friend — a 
Meerschaum  pipe  whose  high  and  ample  bole  was  filled  and  sur- 
mounted by  tobacco  of  Lusatian  growth,  made  more  fragrant  by 
folded  leafits  of  spicy  or  balsamic  plants.  For  a  thing  was  dear 
to  Maxilian.  not  for  what  it  was,  but  for  that  which  it  represented 
or  recalled  to  him :  and  often,  while  his  eye  was  passing, 

"O'er  hill  and  dale,  thro'  Cloudland,  gorgeous  landl" 


452  HIST3RIE  AND  GESTS   OF  MAXILIAN. 

had  his  spirit  clomb  the  heights  of  Imaus,  and  descended  into  th» 
vales  of  Iran,  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  sepulchre  of  Hafiz,  or  the 
bowers  of  Mosellara.  Close  behind  hirn  plashed  and  murmured 
the  companionable  stream,  beyond  which  the  mountains  of  Wick- 
low  hung  floating  in  the  dim  horizon ;  while  full  before  him  rose 
the  towers  and  pinnacles  of  the  metropolis,  now  softened  and 
airy-light,  as  though  they  had  been  the  sportive  architecture  of 
air  and  sunshine.     Yet  Maxilian  heard  not,  saw  not — or,  worse 

still, 

He  saw  them  all,  how  excellently  fair — 
He  saw.  not  felt,  how  beautiful  they  were. 

The  pang  was  too  recent,  the  blow  too  sudden.  Fretfully  strik- 
ing the  fire-spark  into  the  nitred.  sponge,  with  glazed  eye  idly 
fixed,  he  transferred  the  kindled  fragment  to  his  pipe.  True  it 
is,  and  under  the  conjunction  of  friendlier  orbs,  when,  like  a  cap- 
tive king  beside  the  throne  of  his  youthful  conqueror,  Saturn  had 
blended  his  sullen  shine  with  the  subduing  influences  of  the  star 
of  Jove,  often  had  Maxilian  experienced  its  truth — that 

The  poet  in  his  lone  yet  genial  hour 

Gives  to  his  eye  a  magnifying  power : 

Or  rather  he  emancipates  his  eyes 

From  the  black  shapeless  accidents  of  size — 

In  unctuous  cones  of  kindling  coal. 

Or  smoke  upwreathiug  from  the  pipe's  trim  bole, 

His  gifted  ken  can  see 

Phantoms  of  sublimity. 

But  the  force  and  frequence  with  which  our  student  now  com 
mingled  its  successive  volumes,  were  better  suited,  in  their  effects, 
to  exclude  the  actual  landscape,  than  to  furnish  tint  or  canvas  for 
ideal  shapings.  Like  Discontent,  from  amid  a  cloudy  shrine  of 
her  own  outbreathing,  he  at  length  gave  vent  and  utterance  to 
his  feelings  in  sounds  more  audible  than  articulate,  and  which  at 
first  resembled  notes  of  passion  more  nearly  than  parts  of  speech, 
but  gradually  shaped  themselves  into  words,  in  the  following 
soliloquy : — 

"Yes!  I  am  born  to  all  mishap  and  misery! — that  is  the  truth 

of  it ! Child  and  boy,  when  did  it  fall  to  my  lot  to  draw  king 

or  bishop  on  Twelfth  Night  ?  Never  !  Jerry  Sneak  or  Nincom- 
poop, to  a  dead  certainty !  When  did  I  ever  drop  my  bread  and 
butter — and  it  seldom  got  to  my  mouth  without  some  such  cir- 


FLIGHT  I.  452 

euit — but  it  fell  on  the  buttered  side?  "When  did  I  ever  cry, 
Head !  but  it  fell  tail?  Did  1  ever  once  ask,  Even  or  odd,  but  [ 
lost?  And  no  wonder;  for  I  was  sure  to  hold  the  marbles  so 
awkwardly,  that  the  boy  could  count  them  between  my  fingers  ! 
But  this  is  to  laugh  at !  though  in  my  life  I  could  never  descry 
much  mirth  in  any  laugh  I  ever  set  up  at  my  own  vexations,  past 
or  present.  And  that's  another  step-dame  trick  of  Destiny !  •  My 
shames  are  all  immortal !  I  do  believe,  Nature  stole  me  from 
my  proper  home,  and  made  a  blight  of  me,  that  I  might  not  be 
owned  again !  For  I  never  get  older.  Shut  my  eyes,  and  I  can 
find  no  more  difference  between  eighteen  me  and  eight  me,  than 
between  to-day  and  yesterday  !  But  I  will  not  remember  the 
miseries  that  dogged  my  earlier  years,  from  the  day  I  was  first 
breeched  !  (Nay,  the  casualties,  tears,  and  disgraces  of  that  day 
I  never  can  forget.)  Let  them  pass,  however — school-tide  and 
holiday-tide,  school  hours  and  play  hours,  griefs,  blunders,  and 
mischances.  For  all  these  I  might  pardon  my  persecuting 
Nemesis  !  Yea,  I  would  have  shaken  hands  with  her,  as  forgiv- 
ingly as  I  did  with  that  sworn  familiar  of  hers,  and  Usher  of  the 
Black  Rod,  my  old  schoolmaster,  who  used  to  read  his  newspaper, 
when  I  was  horsed,  and  flog  me  between  the  paragraphs  !  1 
would  forgive  her,  I  say,  if,  like  him,  she  would  have  taken  leave 
of  me  at  the  School  Gate.  But  now,  vir  et  togatus,  a  seasoned 
academic — that  now,  that  still,  that  evermore,  I  should  be  the 
whipping-stock  of  Destiny,  the  laughing-stock  of  Fortune."     *     * 

N.B. — Of  the  "  Selection  from  Mr.  Coleridge's  Literary  Cor- 
respondence" the  author  said  in  a  note  to  the  Aids  to  Reflection, 
"which,  however,  should  any  of  my  readers  take  the  trouble  of 
consulting,  he  must  be  content  with  such  parts  as  he  finds  intelli- 
gible at  the  first  perusal.  For  from  defects  in  the  M.S.,  and 
without  any  fault  on  the  part  of  the  Editor,  too  large  a  portion  ia 
so  printed  that  the  man  must  be  equally  bold  and  fortunate  in 
his  conjectural  readings  who  can  make  out  any  meaning  at  all." 
-S.  C. 


NOTES 


NOTES. 


{a)  p.  17.  It  now  seems  clear  to  me,  that  my  Father  here  alludes 
to  a  course  of  lectures  delivered  in  1808,  and  I  think  it  most  probable 
that,  from  some  momentary  confusion  of  mind,  he  wrote  "  sixteen  or 
seventeen,"  instead  of  "  ten  or  eleven  ;"  unless  his  writing  was  wrongly 
copied.  It  does  not  appear  that  he  lectured  on  Shakspeare  in  1801 
or  1802 ;  but  in  March,  April,  and  May  of  1808,  and  I  doubt  not  in 
February  likewise,  he  lectured  on  Poetry  at  the  Eoyal  Institution. 
Schlegel's  lectures,  the  substance  of  which  we  now  have  in  the  Dra- 
maturgische  Vorlesungen,  were  read  at  Vienna  that  same  Spring; 
but  they  were  not  published  till  1809,  and  it  is  mentioned  in  an  Ob- 
servation prefixed  to  part  of  the  work  printed  in  1811,  that  the  portion 
respecting  Shakspeare  and  the  English  Theatre  was  re-cast  after  the 
oral  delivery. 

(b)  p.  18.  My  Father  appears  to  confound  the  date  of  publication 
with  that  of  delivery,  when  he  affirms  that  Schlegel's  Dramatic  Lec- 
tures were  not  delivered  till  two  years  after  his  on  the  same  subjects : 
but  the  fact  is,  as  has  been  mentioned  in  the  last  note,  that  those  parts 
of  Schlegel's  Dram.  Vorlesung.  which  contain  the  coincidences  with 
my  Father,  in  his  view  of  Shakspeare,  were  not  orally  delivered  at 
all — certainly  not  in  the  Spring  of  1808,  but  added  when  the  discourses 
were  prepared  for  the  press,  at  which  time  the  part  about  Shakspeare 
was  almost  altogether  re-written. 

Few  auditors  of  Mr.  Coleridge's  earliest  Shaksperian  lectures  prob- 
ably now  survive.  None  of  those  who  attended  his  lectures  before 
April  in  1808  have  I  been  able  to  discover  or  communicate  with. 
But  I  have  found  this  record  in  Mr.  Payne  Collier's  edition  of  Shak- 
speare, vol.  vii.  p.  193.  "  Coleridge,  after  vindicating  himself  from 
the  accusation  that  he  had  derived  his  ideas  of  Hamlet  from  Schlegel 
(and  we  heard  him  broach  them  some  years  before  the  Lectures  Uebet 
Dramatisclie  Kunst  und  Litteratur  were  published)  thus  in  a  few  sen- 
tences sums  up  the  character  of  Hamlet.  u  In  Hamlet,"  &c.  Intro- 
duction to  Hamlet. 

vol.  iv.  U 


4:58  NOTES. 

(c)  p.  22.  It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  remind  any  attentive  reaaer, 
that  my  Father's  declarations  respecting  independence  of  Schlegel  re- 
late to  his  view  of  the  characteristic  merits  of  Shakspeare,  and  to 
general  principles  of  criticism,  established  and  applied  by  him  in  1808, 
and  still  earlier  in  conversation,  not  to  his  Lectures  of  1818,  fragments 
of  which  are  contained  in  this  volume.  I  think,  however,  that  when 
in  1819  my  Father  wrote  the  record  prefixed  to  the  Notes  on  Hamlet 
(see  p.  144)  he  could  hardly  have  been  aware  how  many  of  the  Ger- 
man critic's  sentences  he  had  repeated  in  these  latter  lectures,  how 
many  of  his  illustrations  had  intertwined  themselves  with  his  own 
thoughts,  especially  in  one  j)art  of  his  subject — the  Greek  Drama — 
by  the  time  they  were  to  be  delivered  in  1818.  Had  he  been  fully 
conscious  of  this,  common  caution  would  have  induced  him  to  ac- 
knowledge what  he  had  obtained  from  a  book  which  was  in  the  hands 
of  so  many  readers  in  England.  I  take  this  opportunity  of  giving 
notice  that  I  shall  make  reference  to  Schlegel  wherever  I  find  thoughts 
or  expressions  of  my  Father's  substantially  the  sanle  as  his,  though  I 
am  by  no  means  sure,  that  in  all  these  passages  there  was  a  borrowing 
on  the  part  of  the  former.  Any  one  who  has  composed  for  the  press, 
and  has  united  with  this  practice  habits  of  accurate  revision  and  an 
anxiety  to  avoid  both  the  reality  and  the  appearance  of  plagiarism, 
will  bear  witness  to  the  fact,  that  coincidences,  both  in  the  form  and 
manner  of  thought,  especially  in  criticism,  are  of  the  commonest  oc- 
currence. Several  striking  coincidences  may  be  found  between 
Schlegel  in  his  Dramatic  Lectures  and  Schelling's  fine  discourse  JJeber 
der  lildenden  Kiinste  (On  the  Imaging  Arts).  For  example,  Schelling 
observes  respecting  the  Niobe  of  ancient  sculpture,  that  "  the  expres- 
sion is  softened  down  by  the  very  nature  of  the  subject,  since  Sor- 
t ow,  by  transcending  all  expression,  annuls  itself,  and  thus  that  Beauty 
which  could  not  have  been  lifesomely  preserved,  is  saved  from  injury 
by  the  commencing  torpor."  Compare  this  with  Schlegel's  interest- 
ing criticism  on  the  Niobe  at  the  end  of  his  third  (now  fifth)  Lec- 
ture (vol.  i.  p.  90,  2d  edit.).  Der  Schmerz  enstellt  den  uberii'dischen 
Add  der  Zuge  iim  so  weniger  da  er  durch  die  pilotzliche  Anhaufung  der 
Schlage,  der  bedeutenden  Fabel  gemdss,  in  Erstarrung  uberzugehen 
scheint.  In  proof  of  this  also  I  would  refer  to  Schelling's  remarks  on 
the  difference  between  the  nature  and  range  of  Sculpture  and  of 
Painting  (Phil.  Schrift.  pp.  375-6),  with  those  of  Schlegel  (vol.  iii.  p. 
121),  Lecture  xii.  (now  xxii.)  "Painting,"  says  Schelling,  "repre- 
sents not  by  corporeal  things,  but  by  light  and  color, — through  an 
incorporeal,  and,  in  some  measure,  spiritual  medium."  "  Its  peculiar 
charm,"  says  Schlegel  of  the  same,  "  consists  in  this,  that  it  makes 
visible  in  corporeal  objects  what  is  least  corporeal,  namely,  light  and 
air."  Eead  also  Schelling's  parallel  of  the  Ancient  mode  of  thought 
with  the  Plastic  Art,  of  the  Modern  with  the  Pictorial  (Phil.  Schrift. 


NOTES.  159 

pp.  346-7);  and  compare  with  Schlegel,  Lecture  i.  (vol.  •.  p.  9)  iind 
Lect.  ix. — now  end  of  Lect.  xvii. — (vol.  ii.  p.  172.)  Bead  Schelling 
on  Imitation  of  the  Ancients,  and  on  the  Principle  of  Life  as  the 
source  of  essential  character  in  Art  {Phil.  Schrift.  pp.  347-8-9),  and 
compare  with  the  doctrine  of  Schlegel  on  the  same  points,  Lect.  i. 
(vol.  i.  pp.  6-7) — Lect.  xii.  (now  xxii.)  vol.  hi.  p.  146. 

I  make  no  douht  that  these  likenesses,  or  rather  samenesses,  of 
thought  and  language  were  matter  of  coincidence  rather  than  adop- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  latter  promulgator,  because,  although  the  Ora- 
tion was  delivered  at  Munich,  Oct.  12,  1807,  half  a  year  before 
Schlegel  read  his  Lectures  at  Vienna,  it  was  not  published  among  the 
author's  collected  Philosophical  Writings  till  1809.  I  can  not  help 
here  expressing  my  surprise  at  the  unconscientious  way  in  which 
positive  charges  of  dishonest  plagiarism  are  too  often  made  and  prop- 
agated. Not  unfrequently  such  charges  are  brought  forward  on 
grounds  which  the  accusers  themselves  have  never  properly  exam- 
ined, and  of  the  true  nature  of  which  they  are  absolutely  ignorant. 
Such  inaccuracy  in  matters  nearly  concerning  the  characters  of  men 
indicates  a  want  of  truthfulness  and  consideration  of  what  is  due  to 
others,  far  more  reprehensible  than  any  case  of  simple  plagiarism, 
ever  so  clearly  established. 

GREEK  DRAMA. 

This  Essay  certainly  contains  a  great  deal  which  is  to  be  found  In 
Schlegel's  Pram.  Vorlesungen.  The  borrowed  parts  were  probably 
taken  from  memory,  for  they  seldom  follow  the  order  of  composition 
in  the  original,  and  no  one  paragraph  is  wholly  transferred  from  it. 
I  must  not  omit,  on  this  occasion,  to  acknowledge  my  obligations  to 
Mr.  Heath,  formerly  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  who,  in  a  letted 
to  the  late  editor  of  Coleridge's  Remains,  dated  April  26,  1838,  pointed 
out,  in  a  broad  way,  the  parts  of  Schlegel's  Lectures  to  which  he  con- 
sidered Mr.  C.  to  be  indebted  in  this  composition.  His  references 
are  to  the  first  edition,  and  for  the  sake  of  those  who  may  possess 
that  and  not  the  second,  to  which  my  notes  refer,  I  give  them  here. 
Vol.  i.  pp.  14,  15,  89  ;  97,  98;  103-4;  270,  272-3  ;  329,  30,  et  seq. 
—332  ;  334,  6,  7,  8. 

(1)  p.  23.  For  the  following  sentences  to  the  end  of  the  paragraph 
see  Schlegel's  vith  (now  xith)  Lect.  vol.  ii.  pp.  15,  16,  2d  edit. 

(2)  p.  23.  "  The  old  comedy,  however,  is  as  independent  and  ori- 
ginal a  kind  of  poetry  as  tragedy ;  it  stands  on  the  same  elevation 
with  it ;  that  is  to  say,  it  goes  as  far  beyond  a  conditionate  reality 
(bedingte  WirMichkeit)  into  the  domain  of  free-creating  fancy." 
Vol.  ii.  p.  17.  "  The  comic  Poet  transports  his  personages  into  an 
ideal  element  as  truly  as  the  tragic."     Transl.     lb.  p.  21. 


460  NOTES. 

(8)  p.  23.  From  "  Tragedy  is  poetry,"  to  the  end  of  the  following 
paragraph,  is  freely  translated  from  lb.  pp.  17,  18,  19. 

(4)  p.  25.  The  reader  may  compare  the  last  two  paragraphs  with 
lb.  pp.  19,  20  :  from  So  wenig  dber  to  in  Freyheit  setzt. 

(5)  p.  26.  Parts  of  the  substance  of  this  paragraph  may  be  found 
in  Lect.  vii.  (now  xii.)  pp.  59,  60,  61.  The  commencing  sentences 
agree  with  Schlegel's  remarks  in  Lect.  vi.  (now  xii.)  p.  26. — Die  alia 
Kombdie  fiat  mit  der  athenischen  Freylieit  zugleich  geblulien,  &c.  Th* 
observation  that  the  moral  law  is  the  ground  in  tragedy,  may  be  com- 
pared with  Schlegel's  teaching  in  Lect.  vii.  (now  xiii.)  vol.  ii.  p.  60 
Der  h'6c7iste  tragische  Ernst,  &c. :  and  in  Lect.  ix.  (now  xvii.)  vol.  ii. 
p.  156.  Wir  sehen  Mer  eine  neue  Bestimmung,  &c.  But  neither 
thought  nor  language  is  identical  in  the  two  passages. 

(6)  p.  26.  For  great  part  of  this  paragraph  see  the  same  (viith  now 
xiiith)  Lecture,  pp.  61,  2,  3,  4. 

(7)  p.  27.     See  Lect.  hi.  (now  iv.)  vol.  i.  p.  62,  and  p.  56. 

(8)  p.  28.  "  The  Chorus,"  says  Schlegel,  "  is  the  idealized  spectator :" 
ii.  80,  Lect.  iii.  (now  v.)  Compare  also  the  next  paragraph  on  the 
Chorus  in  connection  with  unity  of  place  with  remarks  on  the  same 
subject  in  Lect.  ix.  (now  xvii.)  vol.  ii.  p.  165 :  and  p.  168. 

(9)  p.  28.     See  Lect.  iii.  (now  iv.)  vol.  i.  pp.  90,  91-2. 

(10)  p.  29.     lb.  67-8. 

(11)  p.  29.  "Rousseau,"  says  Schlegel  in  his  first  Lecture,  "recog- 
nized the  contrast  in  Music,  and  showed  that  rhythm  and  melody  was 
the  ruling  principle  of  ancient,  as  harmony  is  of  modern  music.  On 
the  imaging  oxts  (bildenden  iTwftste),]iIemsterhuys  made  this  ingenious 
remark,  that  the  old  painters  are  perhaps  too  much  of  sculptors, 
modern  sculptors  too  much  of  painters.  This  touches  the  very  point 
with  which  we  are  concerned :  for,  as  I  shall  unfold  more  fully  in  the 
"sequel,  the  spirit  of  collective  ancient  art  and  poetry  is  plastic,  as  that 
of  the  modern  is  picturesque." — Tr.  vol.  i.  p.  9.  On  the  same  subject 
hear  Schelling.  "  By  this  opposition  not  only  may  we  explain  the 
necessary  predominance  of  Sculpture  in  Antiquity,  of  Painting  in  the 
modern  world  ;  the  former  being  thoroughly  plastic  in  its  mode  of 
thought,  whilst  the  latter  makes  even  the  soul  a  passive  organ  of 
higher  revelations  ;  but  this  also  may  be  inferred,  that  it  is  not  enough 
to  aim  at  the  plastic  in  form  and  representation, — the  prime  requisite 
is  to  think  plastically,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  manner  of  the  ancients. 
But  if  it  is  an  injury  to  Art  when  Sculpture  deviates  into  the  sphere  of 
painting,  on  the  other  hand,  the  restrictions  of  painting  to  plastic  con- 
ditions, and  form  is  a  limitation  arbitrarily  imposed.  For  if  the  former, 
like  gravity,  operates  on  a  single  point,  the  latter,  like  light,  may  fill 
the  whole  world  with  its  creations. — Transl.  Phil.  Schrift.  pp.  376-7. 

The  reader  may  compare  the  first  sentence  af  the  Essay  with 
Schlegel,  vol.  ii.  pp.  15-16,  for  a  general  resemblance  of  thought. 


NOTES.  461 

(d)  p.  35.  This  paragraph  may  be  compared  with  Schlegel,  Lect. 
xii.  (now  xvii.)  vol.  iii.  pp.  116,  117  ;  and  p.  113  : — Es  Tidben  unter 
dem  MenscTtenge&chlecht,  &c.  though  there  is  no  identity  of  expression. 

(e)  p.  35.  Schlegel  observes  in  his  xiith  (xxiind)  Lecture,  "We 
can  readily  admit  that  most  dramatic  works  of  English  and  Spanish 
poets  are,  according  to  the  ancient  sense,  neither  tragedies  nor  come- 
dies ;  they  are  romantic  entertainments — show-pieces  (schauspiele). 
— Transl.  vol.  iii.  p.  117. 

(/)  p.  36.  Schlegel's  opinion  on  stage-illusion,  in  reference  to 
the  old  doctrine  of  the  unity  of  time,  is  to  be  found  in  his  ixth  (now 
xviith)  Lecture :  see  especially  the  paragraph  Gorneille  Jindet  diese 
Regel,  &c.  vol.  ii.  pp.  162,  3, 4 ;  though  there  is  no  perfect  coincidence 
with  Mr.  O.'s  observations  on  the  same  subject  anywhere,  and  for  the 
most  part  none  at  all.  Compare  also  Schlegel's  remarks  on  stage- 
scenery  and  decorations  in  his  xiiith  (now  xxviith)  Lecture,  pp.  74-77. 

(g)  p.  54.  Most  of  the  substance  of  the  following  paragraph  may 
be  found  in  the  following  of  Schlegel's  xiith  (now  xxiind)  Lecture. 
"  To  be  formless  then  is  by  no  means  permissible  for  works  of  genius ; 
but  of  this  there  is  no  danger.  In  order  to  meet  the  objection  of 
formlessness,  we  have  but  to  understand  properly  what  Form  is :  for 
this  has  been  conceived  by  most  men,  and  particularly  by  those  critics 
who  insist  above  all  things  on  a  strict  regularity,  in  a  mechanical  sense, 
and  not  as  it  ought  to  be,  organicalty.  Form  is  mechanical  when  it 
is  impressed  upon  any  piece  of  matter  by  an  outward  operation,  as  a 
mere  accidental  ingredient,  without  regard  to  the  nature  of  the  thing, 
as  for  example,  when  we  give  any  form  at  pleasure  to  a  soft  mass,  to 
be  retained  after  it  has  hardened.  Organic  form,  on  the  contrary,  is 
innate;  it  forms  from  within  outward,  and  attains  its  determinate 
character  together  with  the  full  development  of  the  germ.  Such 
forms  are  found  in  nature  universally,  wherever  living  powers  are  in 
action,  from  the  crystallization  of  salts  and  minerals  to  plants  and 
flowers,  and  from  these  again  up  to  the  human  countenance.  Even 
in  fine  art,  as  in  the  realm  of  that  supreme  artist,  Nature,  all  genuine 
forms  are  organical,  that  is  to  say,  they  are  determined  by  the  nature 
and  quality  of  the  work.  In  a  word,  the  form  is  no  other  than  a  sig- 
nificant exterior,  the  physiognomy  of  a  thing, — when  not  defaced  by 
disturbing  accidents,  a  speaking  physiognomy, — which  bears  true  wit- 
ness of  its  hidden  essence. — The  forms  vary  with  the  direction  of  the 
poetical  sense." — Transl.  vol.  iii.  pp.  115-16. 

(K)  p.  56.  The  doctrine  of  this  section  on  Shakspeare's  judgment 
may  be  compared  with  that  of  Schlegel  laid  down  in  Lect.  xii.  (now 


162  NOTES. 

xxii.)  vol.  iii.  pp.  126-30.  Nacli  alten  stimmen  zu  urtheilen  &c.  But 
such  was  Mr.  Coleridge's  doctrine  before'  he  had  read  Schlegel's 
Dramatic  Lectures;  and,  as  far  as  I  have  observed,  there  is  no  simi- 
larity of  expression. 

(i)  p.  57.  The  leading  thought  in  this  simile  is  the  same  as  in  one 
of  Schlegel's  in  his  first  Lecture,  but  the  expression  is  different. 
"  Many  at  first  sight  brilliant  appearances  in  the  domain  of  the  fine 
Arts,  &c.  resemble  the  gardens  which  little  children  lay  out ;  impatient 
to  behold  a  creation  of  their  hands  complete  on  the  instant,  they 
break  off  twigs  and  flowers  here  and  there,  and  plant  them  without 
more  ado  in  the  earth.  At  first  the  whole  wears  a  goodly  aspect ;  the 
childish  gardener  walks  proudly  up  and  down  among  his  showy 
fi\  >wer-beds,  till  all  comes  to  a  miserable  conclusion,  when  the  rootless 
plants  hang  down  their  withering  leaves  and  blossoms,  and  only  dry 
stalks  remain ;  while  the  dark  forest  whereon  the  diligence  of  the 
artist  was  never  bestowed,  which  rose  up  towards  heaven  before  the 
memory  of  man,  stands  unshattered,  and  fills  the  solitary  beholder 
with  religious  awe." 

The  same  thought  with  its  affecting  images  has  been  introduced  by 
Mr.  H.  Taylor  into  his  Lay  of  Elena. 

"  Then  roamed  she  through  the  forest  walks, 
Cropping  the  wild  flowers  by  their  stalks, 
And  divers  fall-blown  blossoms  gay 
She  gathered,  and  in  fair  array 
Disposed,  and  stuck  them  in  the  mound, 
Which  had  been  once  her  garden-ground. 
They  seemed  to  flourish  for  a  while, 
A  moment's  space  she  seemed  to  smile ; 
But  brief  the  bloom  and  vain  the  toil, 
They  were  not  native  to  the  soil.1' 

Philip  Van  Artwelde,  3d  edit. 

( j)  p.  58.  See  Schelling's  Oration,  pp.  376-7 :  and  Schlegel,  Lcct.  i. 
vol.  i.  p.  9,  and  Lect.  ix.  (now  xvii.)  vol.  ii.  p.  172. 

(k)  p.  58.  "  The  Pantheon  differs  not  more  from  "Westminster  Ab- 
bey or  the  Church  of  St.  Stephen  at  Vienna,  than  the  structure  of  a 
tragedy  of  Sophocles  from  that  of  a  stage  piece  of  Shakspeare." — 
Transl.  Lect.  i.  vol.  i.  p.  10. 

(1)  p.  59.     lb.  p.  9.     See  note  11  to  Essay  on  the  Greek  Drama 

(m)  p.  59.  "  We  must  conceive  it  (the  Chorus)  as  the  personified 
reflection  on  the  action  which  is  going  on,  &c.  This  is  the  general 
poetical  import,  which  is  no  way  affected  by  the  fact,  that  the  Chorus 
had  a  logical  origin  in  the  feasts  of  Bacchus,  and  ever  retained  among 


NOTES.  468 

the  Greeks  a  specially  local  signification." — Transl.  Lect.  lii.  (now  v.) 
vol.  i.  p.  79. 

"  It  was  intelligently  remarked  by  the  Sophist  Gorgias,  that  Mars 
had  inspired  this  last-named  great  drama  {The  Seven  before  Thebes) 
instead  of  Bacchus ;  for  Bacchus,  not  Apollo,  was  the  tutelary  deity 
of  tragic  poets,  which  at  first  sight  seems  strange  ;  but  we  must  bear 
in  mind,  that  the  former  was  not  the  god  of  wine  and  joy  alone,  but 
of  the  higher  inspirations." — Transl.  Lect.  iv.  (now  yi.)  vol.  i.  p.  96. 

(n)  p.  60.  Schlegel  makes  a  remark  in  substance  the  same  as  this, 
Lect.  iv.  (now  vi.)  vol.  i.  p.  98  :  and  again  in  Lect.  ix.  (now  xvii.)  vol 
ii.  pp.  165,  6.     Ferner  lagen  zwischen,  &c. 

(o)  p.  61.  Was  derDuft  eines  sildlichen  Frilhlings  berauschendes, 
der  Gesang  der  Nachtigall  sehnsiichtiges,  das  erste  Aufbliihen  der  Rose 
wollustiges  hat,  das  athmet  aus  diesem  Gedicht.  All  that  is  intoxica- 
ting in  the  fragrance  of  a  southern  spring,  all  that  is  passionate  in  the 
song  of  the  nightingale,  all  that  is  luxurious  in  the  new-blown  rose,— 
all  alike  breathe  from  this  poem. — Transl. 

Das  Silsseste  und  das  Uerbeste,  Liebe  und  Hass,  &c.  &c.  "  Whatever 
is  sweetest  and  bitterest;  Love  and  Hatred;  glad  festivities  and 
gloomy  resentments ;  tender  embraces  and  vaults  of  the  dead  ;  fulness 
of  life  and  self-destruction ;  here  stand  in  thick  array  side  by  side ; 
and  in  the  harmonious  miracle  all  these  opposites  are  so  molten 
into  the  unity  of  a  compound  impression,  that  the  echo  which  the 
whole  leaves  upon  the  mind  is  like  a  single  but  endless  sigh." — Transl. 
Lect.  xii.  (now  xxv.)  vol.  iii.  p.  207. 

(£>)  p.  76.  "  In  the  zephyr-like  Ariel  the  image  of  the  air  can  not 
fail  to  be  perceived ;  his  very  name  expresses  it,  as  on  the  other  hand. 
Caliban  signifies  the  hard  earthly  element."  Transl.  Lect.  xii.  (now 
xxiv.)  vol.  iii.  p.  200.  Schlegel's  criticisms  on  The  Tempest  and  on 
The  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  are  especially  genial  and  eloquent. 
The  light  rich  works  of  fancy  seem  to  have  delighted  him  more,  and 
are,  perhaps,  in  general,  more  adequately  characterized  in  his  book, 
than  those  which  contain  more  for  the  understanding.  His  view  of 
Shakspeare,  however,  on  the  whole  is  most  discriminating — and  en- 
hances our  surprise  at  his  partial  injustice  to  Ben  Jonson  and  Moliere, 
whose  faults  he  has  noted  acutely,  but  whose  redeeming  merits  ho 
does  not  seem  to  have  beheld  with  an  eye  of  equally  fine  discernment. 

(q)  p.  96.  Mr.  Collier  thinks  it  very  possible  that  the  visions  were 
parts  of  an  older  play.  On  the  passage  in  Act  i.  sc.  5,  he  has  this 
note.  "  The  numbered  beach"  must  be  taken,  as  Johnson  observes, 
for  the  numerous  beach  ;  and  "  twinned  stones"  of  the  preceding  line 


4:64  NOTES. 

refers  to  the  likeness,  as  of  twins,  between  the  stones  on  the  beach. 
Coleridge  would  read  with  Farmer  "umbered"  for  "numbered;' 
but,  if  any  change  were  required,  we  should  be  inclined  to  prefer  that 
of  Theobald,  "  Th'  unnumbered  beach."  It  seems  to  be  intended  to 
bring  the  multitude  of  similar  stones  on  the  beach  into  comparison 
with  the  multitude  of  similar  stars  in  the  sky,  and  this  interpretation 
brings  out  "  the  rich  crop  of  sea  and  land"  into  clear  intelligibility. 
But  is  it  meant  that  men's  eyes  can  distinguish  the  stars  above  from 
the  stones  below,  or  the  stars  one  from  another  and  the  stones  like- 
wise, though  both  are  so  numerous  and  so  much  alike  ?  The  grammar 
and  construction  seem  to  require  the  former  sense,  and  yet  the  latter 
seems  the  best. 

The  passage  of  Act  i.  sc.  1,  in  Knight's  edition  stands  thus: 

"  You  do  not  meet  a  man  but  frowns :  our  bloods 
No  mere  obey  the  heavens,  than  our  courtiers 
Still  seem  as  does  the  king ;" — 

And  is  explained  thus  in  a  note  :  "  As  we  have  punctuated  the  pa9^ 
sage,  we  think  it  presents  no  difficulty,  Mood  is  used  by  Shakspeare 
for  natural  disposition,  as  in  All's  "Well  that  ends  Well — 

"  Now  his  important  blood  will  naught  deny 
That  she'll  demand." 

The  meaning  of  the  passage  then  is — You  do  not  meet  a  man  but 
frowns :  our  bloods  do  not  more  obey  the  heavens  than  our  courtiers 
still  seem  as  the  king  seems.     As  is  afterwards  expressed — 

— »  They  wear  their  faces  to  the  bent 
Of  the  king's  looks." 

In  Pisanio's  speech  (Act  i.  sc.  4)  this  edition  has  "  Ms  eye  or  ear."  I 
would  that  my  father  could  have  seen  Mr.  Knight's  Shakspeare,  with 
its  interesting  illustrations,  and  its  refined  and  genial  criticism. 

(?')  104.  Mr.  Payne  Collier  remarks  on  "  path"  in  the  present  pas- 
sage :  "  This  verb  was  in  use  for  walk  by  Drayton,  one  of  the  best 
writers  of  his  time.     All  the  old  editions  concur  in  'path.' " 

(s)  p.  115.  Schlegel  says  of  Juliet  in  the  CharaMeristiken  und 
Kritiken,  "  how  thereupon  her  imagination  falls  into  an  uproar, — so 
many  terrors  bewilder  the  tender  brain  of  the  maiden, — and  she 
drinks  off  the  cup  in  the  tumult,  to  drain  which  with  composuro 
would  have  evinced  a  too  masculine  resolvedness,"  p.  300.  This  is 
the  only  positive  coincidence  between  my  father's  criticism  on  Eomeo 
and  Juliet  with  Schlegel's  eloquent  essay  on  the  same  play ;  but  it  is 
interesting  to  compare  the  two,  especially  when  they  speak  of  the 
family  bonds  that  form  the  groundwork  of  the  tale,  of  Romeo's  first 


NOTES.  405 

love,  and  of  Mereutio.  Those  passages  of  Schlegel's  critique  are  as 
follows  :  "  The  enmity  of  the  two  families  is  the  hinge  on  which  every 
thing  turns:  very  appropriately  therefore  the  representation  com- 
mences with  it.  The  spectator  must  have  seen  its  outbreaks  himself 
in  order  to  know  what  an  insuperable  obstacle  it  is  to  the  union  of 
the  lovers.  The  animosity  of  the  masters  has  rather  rude  represen- 
tatives ;  we  see  how  far  the  matter  must  have  gone  when  these  foolish 
fellows  can  not  meet  without  forthwith  falling  into  a  quarrel.  Ro- 
meo's love  to  Rosalind  makes  up  the  other  half  of  the  argument. 
This  has  been  to  many  a  stumbling-block,  and  Garrick  rejected  it  in 
his  alteration  of  the  play.  To  me  it  appears  indispensable;  it  is  like 
the  overture  to  the  musical  sequence  of  moments,  which  all  unfold 
themselves  out  of  that  first  when  Romeo  beholds  Juliet.  Lyrically 
taken,  though  not  in  respect  of  the  action, — (and  its  whole  charm 
surely  rests  on  the  tender  enthusiasm  which  it  breathes,) — the  piece 
would  be  imperfect  if  it  did  not  contain  within  itself  the  rise  of  his 
passion.  But  ought  we  to  see  him  at  first  in  a  state  of  indifference  ? 
How  is  his  first  appearance  exalted  through  this,  that,  already  re- 
moved from  the  circumstances  of  cold  Reality,  he  walks  on  the  con- 
secrated ground  of  Fancy  ?  The  tender  solicitude  of  his  parents,  his 
restless  pinings,  his  determined  melancholy,  his  fanatical  inclination 
for  loneliness,  every  thing  in  him  announces  the  chosen  one  and  the 
victim  of  Love.  His  youth  is  like  a  thunderous  day  in  spring,  when 
sultry  air  surrounds  the  loveliest,  most  voluptuous  flowers.  Shall  his 
quick  change  of  mind  deprive  him  of  sympathy  ? — or  do  we  not  argue 
from  the  instantaneous  vanquishment  of  his  first  inclination,  which  in 
the  beginning  appeared  so  strong,  the  omnipotence  of  the  new  im- 
pression ?"  pp.  289,  290,  291.  On  the  ancient  feud  of  the  two  houses, 
Schlegel  remarks  in  criticizing  the  concluding  portion  of  the  play, 
"Nay  more  :  the  reconciliation  of  the  heads  of  the  families  over  the 
dead  bodies  of  their  children,  the  only  drop  of  balm  left  for  the  torn 
heart,  is  not  possible  except  through  their  being  informed  as  to  the 
course  of  events.  The  unhappiness  of  the  lovers  is  thus  not  wholly 
in  va^.n ;  sprung  out  of  the  hatred,  with  which  the  piece  begins,  it 
turns,  in  the  cycle  of  events,  back  towards  its  source  and  stops  it  up 
forever. 

Mekctttio. 

"  As  it  may  be  said  of  the  whole  piece,  that  it  is  one  great  antithe- 
sis, wherein  love  and  hatred,  what  is  sweetest  and  what  is  bitterest 
&c.  &c.  are  closely  intermingled,  so  likewise  the  jocund  levity  of 
Mercutio  is  associated  with,  and  opposed  to,  the  melancholy  enthu- 
siasm of  Romeo.  Mercutio's  wit  is  not  the  cold  offspring  of  intellec- 
tual effort,  but  flows  spontaneously  out  of  his  incessant  vivacity  of 
temper.     That  same  rich  measure  of  fancy,  which,  in  Romeo,  joined 


4GG  NOTES. 

with  deep  feeling,  engenders  an  inclination  to  romance,  in  Mercutio, 
amid  the  influences  of  a  clear  head,  takes  a  turn  toward  pleasure.  In 
both  the  very  highest  point  of  life's  fulness  is  visible  ;  in  both  appears 
also  the  swift  transiency  of  whatever  is  most  exquisite,  the  perishable 
nature  of  all  blossoms,  over  which  the  whole  drama  is  one  tender 
strain  of  lamentation.  Mercutio,  as  well  as  Romeo,  is  doomed  to 
early  death.  He  deals  with  his  life  as  with  a  sparkling  wine,  which 
men  drink  off  hastily  ere  its  lively  spirit  evaporates." 

I  add  this  Character  of  Paris. 

'"  The  well-meaning  bridegroom,  who  thinks  that  he  has  loved  Juliet 
right  tenderly,  must  do  something  out  of  the  common  way:  his  sen- 
sibility ventures  out  of  its  every-day  circle,  though  fearfully,  even  to 
the  very  borders  of  the  romantic.  And  yet  how  far  different  are  his 
death-rites  from  those  of  the  Beloved !  How  quietly  he  scatters  his 
flowers !  Hence  I  can  not  ask,  "  "Was  it  necessary,  that  this  honest 
soul  too  should  be  sacrificed  ?  Must  Eomeo  a  second  time  shed  blood 
against  his  will?  Paris  belongs  to  those  persons  whom  we  commend 
in  life,  but  do  not  immoderately  lament  in  death ;  at  his  last  moments 
he  interests  us  especially  by  the  request  to  be  laid  in  Juliet's  grave. 
Here  Romeo's  generosity  breaks  forth,  like  a  flash  of  light  from  dark- 
some clouds,  when  he  utters  the  last  words  of  blessing  over  one  that 
has  become  his  brother  by  misfortune." 

(0  p.  133.  "  In  the  progress  of  the  action  this  piece  {Macbeth)  is 
quite  the  reverse  of  Hamlet ;  it  strides  forward  with  astounding  ra- 
pidity from  the  first  catastrophe  (for  so  may  Duncan's  murder  be 
named)  to  the  last,  'Thought  and  done!'  is  the  general  motto  forr 
as  Macbeth  says : — 

"  ;  The  flighty  purpose  never  is  o'ertook, 
Unless  the  deed  go  with  it.'  "—Transl. 

Lect.  ii.  (now  xxv.)  vol.  iv.  pp.  9, 10.  "  If  Eomeo  and  Juliet  shines 
•ti  the  colors  of  the  dawn,  but  a  dawn  whose  purple  clouds  already 
announce  the  thunder  of  a  sultry  day,  Othello,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
a  picture  with  strong  shadows :  one  may  name  it  a  tragical  Rem- 
brandt."    Lect.  xii.  (now  xxv.)  vol.  iii.  p.  208. 

(u)  p.  135.  "  It  is  wonderful,"  says  Weber,  "  to  find  Mr.  Steevens 
join  with  the  last  editors  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  accusing  them 
of  having  sneered  at  Shakspeare,  when  they  assumed  the  very  inno- 
cent and  common  privilege  of  parody."  The  passages  in  which  their 
great  master  is  sportively  imitated  are  in  the  mock  heroical  vein,*  and 

*  The  instances  are  these,  Woman-Hater,  Act  iii.  sc.  1,  a  parody  on  Hamlet:—  The 
Kni/r)  t  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  first  a  parody  on  Macbeth,  followed  by  "  Sooth,  Ceorgc,  Ilia 


NOTES.  407 

as  my  Father  lias  himself  elsewhere  observed,  "  to  parody  is  not  to  sat- 
irize." Why  should  it  be  thought  that  B.  and  F.  meant  to  detract  from 
the  great  man  by  such  mimicries,  any  more  than  to  disparage  Spenser, 
whose  Faery  Queen  is  so  freely  parodied  in  The  Knight  of  the  Burn- 
ing Pestle  ?  I  would  not  urge  against  this  notion  how  little  cause  the 
younger  dramatists  had,  in  their  day,  to  envy  Shakspeare;  or  that 
they  appear  to  have  been  amiable  and  kindly  persons,  because  the 
human  heart  has  many  folds  and  windings,  and  the  hearts  of  men 
that  lived  three  hundred  years  ago  are  not  easily  perused  throughout; 
but  it  seems  to  me,  that  the  passages  themselves  refute  the  charge  of 
malicious  intention.  Would  the  gall  of  enmity  and  poison  of  envy 
have  thus  been  poured  forth  in  the  form  of  festive  lemonade  and  rum- 
punch  ?  can  we  imagine  that  it  would  have  been  exhaled  in  a  spirit 
of  innocuous  fun  and  jollity?  There  is  always  something  piquant  in 
the  allusion  to  well-known  impressive  tragic  passages  in  the  midst  of 
comedy.  Shakspeare  himself  puts  an  expression  of  Marlowe's  into 
the  mouth  of  Pistol  in  mimicry  of 

"  Holla,  ye  pampcr'd  jades  of  Asia !" 

Tamburlainc,  Part  ii.  Act  iv.  sc.  4. 

very  ghost  would  have  folks  beaten."  Act  v.  sc.  1.  Secondly,  in  the  Prologue,  a  repeti- 
tion nearly  verbatim  of  Hotspur's  bravura  speech,  "  By  Heaven !  methinks,  it  were  an 
easy  leap  ;"  and  thirdly,  what  none  of  the  editors,  as  far  as  I  know,  have  noticed,  a  par- 
ody on  an  incident  in  Romeo  and  Juliet — when  Luce  feigns  death  and  is  conveyed  out  of 
her  father'3  house  in  a  coffin.— In  The  Scornful  Lady,  Act  ii.  sc.  1,  Sir  Roger  says,  in 
allusion  to  Hamlet's  famous  soliloquy: — 

1  To  sleep,  to  die ;  to  die,  to  sleep  ;  a  very  figure,  Sir.' 

The  same  play  contains  a  reference,  as  has  been  supposed,  to  Lear  :— 

"  This  fellow,  with  his  bluntness,  hopes  to  do 
More  than  the  long  suits  of  a  thousand  could." 

In  The  Noble  Gentlemen,  Act  iii.  sc.  4,  is  what  Theobald  calls  a  flirt  on  Henry  the  Fifth, 
Act  iii.  sc.  1.— Weber  an  "  innocent  parody."  In  The  Woman's  Prize,  Act  v.  sc.  14,  "  Let's 
remove  our  places"  has  been  said  to  be  plainly  a  sneer  at  Hamlet :  and  Petrachio's  declara- 
tion, 

"  Something  I'll  do ;  but  what  it  is  I  know  not."    Act  ii.  sc.  4. 

■  »ii.o  at  Lear  ;  a  suggestion  which  Mr.  Dyce  rebuts  by  "  Nonsense  ;  there  is  more  of  con* 
pliment  than  '  sneer'  in  these  recollections  of  Shakspeare."  Besides  these  there  may  be 
others,  but  1  have  not  observed  any,  except  a  sentence  at  the  end  of  The  Beggar's  Bush, 
which  none  of  the  editors  seem  to  understand :  Mr.  Dyce  thinks  that  Steevens  has  not  hit 
the  meaning  by  any  of  his  conjecture?.  Higgen  winds  up  a  swaggering,  canting  speech 
with  the  words  '  the  spirit  of  Bottom  is  grown  bottomless.'  He  has  just  declared  that  he 
will  not  '  turn  the  wheel  for  Crab  the  rope-maker,'  but  have  a  free  course  and  go  seek 
his  fortune  in  England.  Perhaps  therefore  his  words  mean  only  this :  "  Though  I  am  but 
a  clown,  like  Bottom,  my  spirit  is  not  to  be  confined :  the  resources  of  my  courage  and 
ingenuity  are  endless."  In  Act  ii.  sc.  1  of  this  play  there  is  another  good-natured  parody 
on  Henry  the  Eighth.  Mason  remarks  on  the  absurdity  of  the  supposition,  that  such  allu- 
sions were  meant  for  serious  sarcasm :  but  so  far  was  the  notion  carried,  that  Meed  even 
found  ridicule  of  Ophelia's  catastrophe  in  Savil's  speech  at  the  end  of  Act  iii.  of  Th* 
Scornful  Lady  : 

'  I  will  run  mad  first;  if  that  get  not  pity, 
Til  drown  myself  to  a  most  dismal  dittv.' 


468  NOTES. 

— a  line  parodied  by  many  of  our  early  dramatists.  If  the  author  of 
Tamburlaine  had  been  the  lesser  play-wright,  and  the  author  of  Henry 
IV.  the  greater,  commentators  would  perhaps  have  exclaimed,  "What 
an  envious  ill-conditioned  slave  was  that  Shakspeare  to  sneer  at  the 
divine  Marlowe!" 

(v)  p.  144.  Sir  H.  Davy  made  his  great  discover}7,  the  decomposi- 
tion of  the  fixed  alkalies  and  detection  of  their  metallic  bases,  in  Oc- 
tober of  1807.  In  March,  1808,  Mr.  C.  was  in  the  midst  of  that  course 
of  Lectures  to  which,  in  my  belief,  he  refers  in  this  record,  as  appears 
from  a  letter  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy  to  Mr.  Poole  of  Nether  Stowey, 
published  in  the  life  of  that  distinguished  philosopher  by  Dr.  Paris, 
vol.  i.  p.  224.  It  seems  to  have  been  mainly  through  Davy's  advice 
and  intervention,  that  my  father  was  induced  to  give  this  course  of 
Lectures.  In  August,  1807,  he  wrote  thus  to  Mr.  Poole:  "If  Cole- 
ridge is  still  with  you,  be  kind  enough  to  let  him  know,  that  I  wrote 
nearly  a  week  ago  two  letters  about  Lectures,  &c.  &c.  The  Managers 
of  the  Eoyal  Institution  are  very  anxious  to  engage  him  ;  and  I  think 
he  might  be  of  material  service  to  the  public  and  benefit  to  his  own 
mind,  to  say  nothing  of  the  benefit  his  purse  might  also  receive.  In 
the  present  condition  of  society  his  opinions  in  matters  of  taste,  litera- 
ture and  metaphysics,  must  have  a  healthy  influence;  and  unless  he 
soon  becomes  an  actual  member  of  the  living  world,  he  must  expect 
to  be  hereafter  brought  to  judgment  for  hiding  his  light." — Vol.  i. 
p.  262. 

These  feelings  of  affectionate  interest  were  reciprocated  by  my 
father,  who  followed  Sir  Humphry's  brilliant  career  in  a  triumphant 
and  gratulant  spirit.  "  I  rejoice,"  said  he,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Purkis. 
"in  Davy's  progress.  There  are  three  suns  recorded  in  Scripture: — 
Joshua's  that  stood  still ;  Hezekiah's  that  went  backward ;  and  David's 
that  went  forth  and  hastened  on  his  course,  like  a  bridegroom  from 
his  chamber.  May  our  friend's  prove  the  latter  !  It  is  a  melancholy 
thing  to  see  a  man  like  the  sun  in  the  close  of  the  Lapland  summer, 
meridional  in  his  horizon;  or  like  wheat  in  a  rainy  season,  that  shoots 
up  well  in  the  stalk  but  does  not  Teem.  As  I  have  hoped,  and  do 
hope  more  proudly  of  Davy  than  of  any  other  man,  &c,  my  disap- 
pointment would  be  proportionally  severe." 

Dr.  Paris  tells  the  following  anecdote  in  proof  of  "  the  fascinations 
)f  Davy's  style."  "A  person  having  observed  the  constancy  with 
tvhich  Mr.  Colerrlge  attended  these  lectures,  was  induced  to  ask  the 
poet,  what  attractions  he  could  find  in  a  f  tudy  so  unconnected  with 
his  known  pursuits.  '  I  attend  Davy's  lectures,'  he  said,  '  to  increase 
my  stock  of  metaphors.'  "*  I  doubt  not  the  charms  of  Sir  Humphry's 
style  or  my  father's  delight  in  it — a  poetical  turn  of  thought  and  tern* 

*  Vol.  i.  p.  123 


NOTES.  469 

perament  was  plainly  the  cement,  which  united  the  poetic  philosopher 
and  the  philosophic  poet — or  philosopher  and  poet — in  such  special 
sympathy:  but  that  the  latter  sought  to  enrich  his  metaphoric  store- 
house by  borrowing  ready-made  tropes  and  figurative  expressions 
from  his  friend,  if  so  the  story  is  to  be  understood,  I  doubt  exceed- 
ingly. My  father  was  fond  of  illustrating  mental  facts  by  physical 
analogies,  of  explaining  and  adorning  metaphysical  subjects  by  images 
cbtained  from  the  Eealm  of  Nature  at  the  hands  of  the  physical  Sci- 
ences, especially  chemistry ; — I  believe  it  was  the  mere  material  for 
metaphoric  language  that  he  sought  to  gather  from  the  lips  of  his 
friend.  Even  this,  however,  could  have  been  but  a  secondary  induce- 
ment to  my  father  to  attend  the  discourses  of  the  great  philosophic 
genius  of  the  day :  he  loved  knowledge  for  its  own  sake  too  well  to 
seek  it  principally  for  any  but  its  own  sake  alone. 

(w)  p.  146.     See  note  s. 

(x)  p.  146.  Mr.  Strachey,  in  a  recently  published  Essay  on  Hamlet, 
wherein  he  maintains  that  "Coleridge  is  our  true  guide  in  the  study 
of  Shakspeare,"  and  observes  how  "  immeasurably  more  profound  his 
criticisms  are  than  those  of  Schlegel  or  Goethe,"  extracts  the  two  fore- 
going paragraphs,  prints  the  last  sentence,  "  He  mistakes  the  seeing 
his  chains,.  &c."  in  italics,  and  proceeds  to  say : — "  This  masterly  view 
of  Hamlet's  character  needs  no  recommendation  of  mine;  it  is,  1 
suppose,  universally  recognized  by  all  students  of  Shakspeare  in  the 
present  day  as  the  criticism.  But  I  would  call  attention  to  the  passages 
of  it,  which  I  have  marked  with  italics.  Though  Coleridge  is  sup- 
ported by  Goethe,  Schlegel,  and  all  the  commentators  I  know  of  in 
the  present  and  previous  centuries,  in  his  assertion  that  Hamlet  delays 
action  till  action  is  of  no  use,  and  dies  the  victim  of  mere  circumstance 
and  accident,  I  must  hesitate  to  agree  to  his  conclusion.  Nay,  pre- 
sumptuous as  I  feel  it  to  be,  to  set  myself  against  such  an  array  of 
authorities,  I  must  believe  that  Hamlet,  being  exactly  the  character 
that  Coleridge  describes  him,  does  yet  end  by  mastering  that  charac- 
teristic defect,  and  that  he  dies  not  a  victim,  but  a  martyr, — winning, 
not  losing,  the  cause  for  which  he  dies."  Mr.  Strachey  endeavors  to 
show  that  this  was  Shakspeare's  direct  intention,  in  reference  to  which 
the  whole  plot  of  the  drama  is  constructed — that  he  meant  to  repre- 
sent Hamlet  as  doubly  a  conqueror  in  death, — not  only  as  an  avenger 
and  punisher  of  another's  crime,  but  as  a  victor  over  his  own  beset- 
ling  sin  of  irresolution.  Analyzing  the  conclusion  of  the  play  he 
alleges,  that  "  Hamlet  has  come  once  more  into  the  king's  presence, 
not  with  any  plan  for  the  execution  of  his  just  vengeance,  but  with, 
what  is  much  better,  the  faith  that  an  opportunity  will  present  itself, 
and  the  resolution  to  seize  it  instantly."  "  Nothing  but  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  was  dying,  that  now  or  never  must  the  blow  be  struck, 
could  have  sufficiently  spurred  Hamlet  to  do  a  deed  so  utterly  repug- 


4?0  NOTES. 

nant  to  his  over- wrought  sensibilities,  as  the  killing  with  his  own 
hand  his  uncle,  his  mother's  husband,  and  his  king.  He  had  shrunk 
from  the  task  again  and  again,  though  he  knew  it  was  his  appointed 
duty ;  but  he  had  resigned  himself  to  Heaven,  and  looked  for  strength 
to  be  sent  him  thence,  in  Heaven's  own  way."  These  remarks  are 
very  interesting,  as  indeed  is  the  whole  essay  of  which  they  form  a 
part;  but  whether  they  establish  the  point  that  Hamlet  in  death  is 
more  than  a  vanquisher  of  his  father's  assassin, — that  while  he  strikes 
the  fatal  blow  at  him,  he  overcomes  his  own  native  vice  of  irresolu- 
tion,— may  be  questioned.  At  no  time,  during  the  period  represented 
in  the  drama,  would  Hamlet  have  wanted  power  to  execute  his  ap- 
pointed task  on  the  application  of  an  extraordinary  stimulus  goading 
him  at  once  to  performance  without  allowing  opportunity  for  that 
refined  meditation  on  the  nature  of  the  thing  proposed  and  that  nice 
calculation  of  consequences,  which  is  apt  to  suspend,  if  not  to  paralyze, 
the  hand  of  action.  When  he  killed  Polonius  intending  to  kill  the 
king,  Hamlet  displayed  the  same  power  to  do  the  work  on  a  sudden 
impulse  that  he  shows  in  the  catastrophe,  when  he  knows  that  now 
the  blow  must  be  struck  or  never.  It  is  indeed  a  notion  most  unworthy 
of  Hamlet,  that  he  strikes  at  last  to  avenge  himself,  not  his  father ; 
he  avenges  his  father,  his  mother,  and  himself  all  at  once,  and  pun- 
ishes at  the  same  time  that  one  spirit  of  evil,  from  which  all  the 
crimes  of  the  "murderous  damned  Dane"  had  proceeded.  But  this 
sudden  vengeance  is  yet  no  proof  that  he  had  subdued  the  projyensity 
to  "delay  action  till  action  was  of  no  use."  It  does  not  appear  that 
he  enters  the  king's  presence  with  any  determinate  intention  of  de- 
spatching him  on  that  occasion :  just  before  the  fencing-match  was 
proposed  to.  him  he  resolves  to  "  quit  him  with  his  arm,"  in  a  certain 
"interim;" — the  time  that  should  elapse  before  the  report  of  his  prac- 
tices arrived  from  England ;  but  had  he  not  been  both  incited  and 
capacitated  to  the  final  act  by  means  which  he  had  not  himself  either 
foreseen  or  provided,  he  might  again  have  out-staid  his  opportunity 
and  thought  too  precisely  on  the  event  for  execution.  It  may  be  re- 
marked also,  that  by  the  -Queen's  death,  one  great  source  of  Hamlet's 
vacillating  reluctance  to  despatch  her  husband  was  removed:  he 
could  now  say :  "  Follow  my  mother."  "  So  shall  you  hear,"  says 
Horatio, 

"  Of  carnal,  bloody,  and  unnatural  acts ; 
Ot  accidental  judgments,  casual  slaughters  ; 
Of  deaths  put  on  by  cunning  and  forc'd  cause ; — 
And  in  this  upshot,  purposes  mistook 
Fall'n  on  the  inventors'  heads."— 

The  king's  death  by  the  hand  of  Hamlet  must  come  under  the  head 
of  "accidental  judgments"  as  well  as  that  of  Laertes;  otherwise  it  is 
not  referred  to  at  all  in  this  summary.     Goethe,  with  his  usual  point 


NOTES.  471 

and  iinpressiveness,  observes  that  the  catastrophe  is  so  contrived  ao 
to  appear  a  fulfilment  of  destiny  rather  than  the  result  of  human  acts, 
and  thus  to  approve  the  common  saw,  "  Man  proposes  but  God  dis- 
poses." "  Purgatory  fire  sends  forth  its  spirit  to  demand  vengeance, 
but  in  vain;  conspiring  circumstances  incite  to  vengeance,  but  in 
vain.  Neither  powers  of  the  earth  nor  powers  under  the  earth  are 
able  to  achieve  that  work  which  it  is  reserved  for  Fate  to  accomplish. 
The  judgment  hour  arrives.  The  wicked  man  falls  with  the  good.  One 
generation  is  mown  down  and  another  springs  up  to  succeed  it."* 

"  Goethe,"  says  the  author  of  the  essay  before  quoted,  "  as  his  wont 
is,  describes  with  exquisite  transparency  of  thought  and  word  all  that 
meets  his  piercing,  passionless,  comprehensive  gaze,  as  he  looks  on 
Hamlet  from  without ;  Coleridge,  in  his  way,  contemplates  his  subject 
from  within,  and  the  result  shows  the  superiority  of  his  method."! 
I  should  say  indeed  that  the  criticism  on  Hamlet,  in  Wilhelm  Meister 
taken  at  large,  rather  exhibits  the  genius  of  Goethe  than  illustrates 
that  of  Shakspeare,  or  breathes  the  spirit  of  his  wide-souled  drama. 
It  was  like  him  who  imagined  a  Werter  and  a  Mignon  to  suppose  the 
import  of  the  whole  to  be  this : — "  a  great  deed  imposed  on  a  soul  not 
framed  and  fitted  for  any  such  enterprise:  as  if  an  oak-tree  were 
planted  in  a  costly  vase,  that  should  have  received  none  but  exquisite 
flowers  into  its  bosom ;  the  roots  extend  and  the  vessel  is  shivered 
to  pieces."^  Consider  too  the  plot  which  he  so  calmly  proposes 
to  substitute  for  that  of  our  immortal  bard! — a  neat  compact  single 
little  plot,  which  keeps  the  eyes  of  spectators  wTithin  due  compass 
instead  of  driving  their  imaginations  abroad  into  all  the  ends  of  the 
earth."§  Anstatt  class  sonst  seine  Eiiibildungskraft  in  der  ganzen 
Welt  herumgejagt  wurde! — This  was  a  plot  indeed  to  delight  a  Serlo, 
the  manager  of  a  little  theatre,  and  flatterer  of  little  narrow-though  ted 
audiences !  But  with  Goethe's  leave  we  will  keep  "  the  troubles  in 
Norway,  the  battle  with  young  Fortinbras,  the  embassy  to  the  old 
Uncle,  Horatio's  return  from  Wittenberg,  the  journey  of  Laertes  to 
France,  the  sending  of  Hamlet  to  England." — We  can  not  dispense 
with  these  things,  these  "  thin  loose  threads  which  run  through  the 
whole  piece" — if  Serlo  could.  Such  remarks  to  the  worshippers  of 
Goethe  would  perhaps  appear  as  over  bold  as  his  on  Shakspeare's 
drama  appears  to  the  writer  of  them.  Schlegel's  critique  on  Hamlet 
is  found  in  his  xiith  (now  xxvth)  Lecture.  "  The  general  aim  of  the 
work,"  he  says,  is  to  show  that  a  reflectiveness  which  pursues  all  the 

*  Wilhelm  Jtleistcr. — Book  iv.  chap.  15. 

t  Shakspeare's  Hamlet;  an  attempt  to  find  the  Key  to  a  great  moral  Problem  by 
Methodical  Analysis  of  the  Play. 

X  Hier  wird  ein  Eichbaum  in  ein  kdstliches  Oefd'ss  gepflanzt,  das  nur  liebliche  Blumen 
in  seinen  Schoos  hatte  aufnehmen  solle?i ;  die  Wurzeln  dehnen  sick  aus,  das  Oefass  vsird 
ternichtet. — Book  v.  chap.  13. 

$  Book  v.  chap.  4. 


472  NOTES. 

relations  and  possible  consequences  of  an  action  even  to  the  last 
limits  of  human  foresight,  paralyzes  the  power  of  performance,  aa 
Hamlet  himself  expresses  it : — 

e;  And  thus  the  native  hue  of  resolution 
Is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought ; 
And  enterprises  of  great  pith  and  moment 
With  this  regard  their  currents  turn  away 
And  lose  the  name  of  action." 

Schlegel  says  of  Ilamlet,  that  chance  and  necessity  alone  excite  him 
to  bold  strokes  and  sharp  measures,  and  he  describes  the  catastrophe 
of  the  play  as  brought  about  by  accident.  He  takes  a  less  favorable 
view  of  the  Prince  of  Denmark's  character  than  either  Goethe  or 
my  Father,  for  he  thinks  him  not  only  wanting  in  practical  energy 
and  resolvedness,  but  naturally  addicted  to  artifice  and  dissimulation, 
fond  of  the  round-about  path  for  its  own  sake  ;  a  hypocrite  toward 
himself,  and  of  so  skeptical  a  temper,  that  he  can  not  retain  a  firm  hold 
of  any  belief,  and  even  begins  to  look  on  his  father's  ghost  as  an  illu- 
sion when  it  is  no  longer  present  to  his  sight.  "  He  goes  so  far  as 
to  aver  that  nothing  is  either  good  or  evil,  but  as  thinking  makes  it ; 
the  poet  loses  himself  with  his  hero,  in  a  maze  of  meditation,  where 
neither  end  nor  beginning  is  to  be  found." 

(y)  p.  158.  "  In  corroboration  of  this  criticism,"  says  Mr.  Strachey 
(in  which  perhaps  we  have  an  instance  of  that  intuitive  power,  which 
Coleridge  possessed  so  remarkably,  of  anticipating  a  priori  the  evi- 
dence of  facts  which  he  happened  to  be  unaware  of),  it  is  worth  while 
to  notice  the  Play  by  Marlowe  and  Nash,  with  the  title  of  the 
Tragedie  of  Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage,  published  in  1594,  which  Slee- 
vens  discovered,  and  has  given  an  extract  from.  This  extract  is  (in 
Hamlet's  words)  "  ^Eneas'  tale  to  Dido ;  and  thereabout  of  it  espe- 
cially, where  he  speaks  of  Priam's  slaughter ; — "  and  though  there 
is  not  a  line,  hardly  a  thought  of  it,  the  same  as  the  passage  which 
the  player  recites,  and  which  is  of  course  Shakspeare's  own,  still  the 
style  is  so  like,  that  the  audience  would  probably  have  been  reminded 
of  Marlowe's  play,  and  so  have  experienced  the  sensation  of  hearing 
real  men  quoting  a  real  play ;  nay,  if  they  retained  only  a  general 
recollection  of  the  original,  might  have  supposed  that  the  quotation 
was  actually  from  Marlowe's  "  Tragedie  of  Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage." 
The  first  and  last  lines  of  Steevens'  extract,  give  a  sufficient  notion 
>f  it. 

"  At  last  came  Pirrhus  fell,  and  full  of  ire, 
His  harnesse  dropping  bloud  ;  and  on  his  speare, 
The  mangled  head  of  Priam's  yongestsonne  : 
And  after  him  his  band  of  Mirmidons, 
With  balles  of  wildfire  in  their  murdering  pawes, 
Which  made  the  f unerall  flame  that  burnt  faire  Troy ; 
All  which  hem'd  me  about,  crying,  thia  is  he. 


NOTES.  473 

Jove's  marble  statue  'gan  to  bend  the  brow, 

As  lothing  Pirrhus  for  this  wicked  act ; 

Yet  he  undaunted  tooke  his  father's  fingge, 

And  dipt  it  in  the  old  king's  chill  cold  bloud, 

And  then  in  triumph  ran  into  tho  streetes, 

Through  which  he  could  not  pass  for  slaughtered  men : 

So  leaning  on  his  sword,  he  stood  stone  still, 

Viewing  the  fire  wherewith  rich  Ilion  burnt." 

Scli.egbl  says  of  the  player's  speech  about  Hecuba  that  it  must  be 
judged  not  in  itself  but  by  the  place  which  it  occupies.  In  order 
that  it  may  appear  as  a  dramatic  fiction  relatively  to  the  play  at  large, 
it  must  be  distinguished  from  the  loftier  poetry  of  the  latter  as  theatri- 
cal elevation  is  from  simple  nature.  On  this  account  Shakspeare 
composed  the  play  in  Hamlet  throughout  in  sententious  rhymes  full 
of  antitheses.  But  this  solemn  measured  tone  would  not  suit  a  dis- 
course in  which  strong  emotion  ought  to  prevail,  and  thus  the  poet 
had  no  other  expedient  left  him  than  that  which  he  adopted, — exag- 
geration of  the  pathos.  The  speech,  no  doubt,  is  falsely  emphatical, 
but  this  is  so  combined  with  true  grandeur,  that  an  actor  practised 
in  artificially  exciting  within  himself  the  emotions  he  imitates,  may 
really  be  carried  away  by  it."  Lecture  xiith  (now  xxvth)  pp.  215, 
216. 

(z)  p.  164.  "  The  speech  of  the  Porter,"  says  Mr.  P.  Collier  in  his 
introduction  to  Macbeth,  p.  96,  "  is  exactly  of  the  kind  which  the  per- 
former of  the  part  might  be  inclined  to  enlarge,  and  so  strongly  was 
Coleridge  convinced  that  it  was  an  interpolation  by  the  player,  that 
he  boldly  "pledged  himself  to  demonstrate  it."  This  notion  was  not 
new  to  him  in  1818 ;  for  three  years  earlier  he  had  publicly  declared 
it  in  a  lecture  devoted  to  Macbeth,  although  he  admitted  that  there 
was  something  of  Shakspeare  in  "the  primrose  way  to  the  ever- 
lasting bonfire."  It  may  be  doubted  whether  he  would  have  made 
this  concession,  if  he  had  not  recollected  "  the  primrose  path  of 
dalliance"  in  Hamlet.  My  father  seemed  inclined  to  reject  as  not 
genuine  in  Shakspeare  whatever  was  not  worthy  of  Shakspeare :  but 
there  are  parts  of  his  works  not  with  any  show  of  probability  to  be 
rejected,  which  are  discreditable  to  his  taste  and  judgment,  as  much, 
perhaps,  and  in  the  same  way,  as  the  sentences  he  wished  to  discard. 
If  the  Porter's  "  soliloquy  and  his  few  speeches  afterwards"  are  inter- 
relations, the  play,  as  it  proceeded  from  his  hands,  must  have  want- 
ed that  comic  ingredient,  which  is  found  in  all  his  other  tragic  pro- 
ductions. Mr.  Coleridge,  as  we  have  seen,  can  hardly  believe  the 
genuineness  of  two  vile  punning  lines  in  a  speech  of  Mark  Antony  \v, 
Julius  Ccesar : 

"  O  world !  thou  wast  the  forest  to  this  hart, 
And  this,  indeed,  O  world!  the  heart  of  thee." 

Act  lii.  bc.  1. 


174  NOTES. 

Considerable  inroads  must  be  made  into  the  text  of  Sbakspeare,  if  it 
is  to  be  weeded  of  all  such  coarse  flowers  as  these ; — even  in  passages 
of  deep  interest  the  great  man  has  sometimes  flawed  his  goodly- 
work  by  the  introduction  of  a  worthless  play  on  words.  To  the  in- 
stances of  this  adduced  by  Mr.  Hallam,  others  might  be  added  out 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet :  some  of  Borneo's  conceits, — as  when  in  Act 
iv.  sc.  3,  he  compares  the  grave  that  holds  his  dead  fair  one  to  a 
lantern,  would  be  generally  condemned,  I  think,  as  frigidly  fantastic, 
but  for  the  predominance  of  beauty  and  passion  in  the  drama,  assim 
ilating  and  fusing  into  the  harmony  of  one  golden  glow  the  grotesque 
and  the  graceful.  My  Father  admits  that  "  the  subterraneous  speeches 
of  the  Ghost"  in  Hamlet  "  are  hardly  defensible  ;"  to  me  they  seem 
as  low  a  bathos,  after  the  awful  and  affecting  representations  that 
precede  them,  as  can  easily  be  imagined.  The  arguments  of  Schlegel, 
Mr.  Knight,  and  others,  for  the  genuineness  of  Titus  Andronicus, 
even  from  the  internal  evidence,  appear  to  me  very  strong.  The 
faults  and  the  deficiencies  of  that  drama  are  precisely  such  as  the 
immature  Shakspeare  might — probably  would — be  guilty  of;  and 
faulty  and  defective  as  the  piece  may  be,  in  comparison  with  the 
great  man's  later  performances,  it  is  yet  at  once — as  it  seems  to  me 
—  too  vigorous  and  too  poetical  to  be  assigned  to  any  other  writer  of 
Shakspeare's  age  except  Jonson,  or  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  that 
it  is  none  of  theirs  we  know  both  from  the  style,  and  from  outward 
proof  in  abundance. 

(aa)  p.  164.  "That  Shakspeare  has  any  such  invincible  and  inor- 
dinate passion  for  playing  with  words  and  syllables  I  can  not  myself 
[  erceive.  It  is  true  he  often  makes  a  lavish  use  of  this  figure ;  in 
other  pieces  he  has  but  sparingly  interspersed  verbal  witticisms  ;  nay 
in  some,  Macbeth  for  instance,  not  a  single  pun  is  to  be  found." — 
Transl.  Lect.  xii.  (now  xxiii.)  Vol.  in.  p.  157. 

(lb)  p.  173.  u  It  is  a  far  graver  objection  that  Shakspeare  wounds 
our  feelings  by  exhibiting  unveiled  the  most  loathsome  moral  hateful- 
ness ;  that  he  remorselessly  harrows  up  the  mind,  and  even  shocks 
the  eye  by  spectacles  of  insufferable  horror.  But  in  truth  he  has 
never  arrayed  the  fierce  blood-thirsty  passions  in  an  attractive  exte- 
rior, never  adorned  wickedness  Avith  a  false  show  of  magnanimity ;  and 
he  is,  on  that  account,  every  way  deserving  of  praise.  Twice  he  has 
portrayed  absolute  villains  ;  but  in  how  masterly  a  way,  even  here,  he 
lias  avoided  impressions  of  too  painful  a  nature  may  be  seen  in  Iago 
and  in  Richard  the  Third."  Transl.  Lect.  xii.  (now  xxiii.)  vol.  iii.  p.  157. 
Shakspeare's  works  contain  a  triumvirate  of  thoroughly  evil  men;  for 
Edmund  might  have  been  named  with  the  bloody  tyrant  Bichard,  and 
the  "  demi-devil"  Iago ;  to  him  we  might  apply  Hamlet's  character 


NOTES.  475 

of  his  Uncle — and  call  him  a  "remorseless,  treacherous,  kindlest 
villain." 

(cc)  p.  203.  Mr.  Dyce  in  his  excellent  edition  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  notices  almost  all  these  remarks  on  his  authors.  Of  the  pres- 
ent one  he  says — "  A  note  unworthy  of  this  great  writer ;  for  '  quires' 
is  fully  as  absurd  a  conjecture  as  '  carcass.'  Mason  rightly  observes 
that  to  call  a  man's  body  his  four  quarters  is  a  vulgar  phrase  at  this 
day.  Theobald  did  give  the  speech  as  blank  verse  ( — this  play  was 
not  edited  by  Seward — )  but  with  an  arrangement  in  the  earlier  part 
different  from  that  which  (though  not  altogether  satisfactory)  I  have 
thought  it  better  to  adopt."     Yol.  iii.  p.  28. 

(dd)  p.  204.  Mr.  Dyce  calls  this  also  an  unfortunate  conjecture . 
seeing  that  "  Drayton  (whose  Heroical  Epistles  and  Owl  are  spoken  of 
in  the  earlier  part  of  this  passage),  though  a  voluminous  author,  was 
not  the  writer  of  a  vast  number  of  popular  tracts,  which,  according  to 
Sir  Koger,  were  consumed  in  cellars  and  tobacco  shops."  Former 
editors,  he  tells  us,  maintained  the  reading  "Nich.  Broughton,"  a 
blunder  rendered  ludicrous  by  the  simple  fact  that  the  name  of  the 
mystical  divine  in  question  was  not  Nicholas  but  Hugh.  In  short 
"  Wi.  Br."  in  his  opinion  is  undoubtedly  put  for  Nicholas  Breton,  of 
whose  pieces  inverse  and  prose  a  catalogue  may  be  found  in  Lowndes's 
Bibliog.  Manual, — but  who  is  now  remembered  only  as  the  writer  of 
the  pretty  ballad  of  Phillida  and  Corydon.  See  Dyce's  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  vol.  iii.  p.  28. 

(ee)  p.  206.  Mr.  Dyce  puts  double  notes  of  admiration  at  this  pro- 
posal of  "  Astrsea"  :  and  explains  thus  :  "  The  old  text  is  doubtless 
right — meaning — she  has  a  face  which  looks  like  a  book  ;  the  book 
of  the  heavens  looks  very  like  her  (the  heavens,  astrologically 
speaking,  being  one  great  book  in  which  the  deity  has  written  the 
history  of  the  world,  and  in  which  men  may  read  their  fortunes,  &c.)" 
Vol.  x.  p.  241. 

Perhaps  the  poet  had  a  more  simple,  sensuous,  and  impassioned 
meaning, — referred  less  to  astrology  than  to  the  splendor  of  the  heav- 
ens' outward  face  which  is  ever  telling  the  glory  of  God. 

(ff)  p.  208.  "Mr.  Theobald,"  says  Mr.  Dyce,  "totally  misunder- 
stood this  passage,  and  therefore  pointed  it  thus  : 

"  And  lets  the  serious  part  of  life  run  by 
As  thin  neglected  sand,  whiteness  of  name 
You  must  be  mine,"  &c. 

To  my  surprise  Coleridge  defends  Theobald's  punctuation,  which  was 
introduced  into  the  text  in  direct  opposition  to  all  the  old  editions." 
Vol.  x.  p.  263. 


4:76  NOTES 

Another  passage  in  this  play  has  greatly  puzzied  successive  editoit 
and  been  set  down  as  corrupt  by  all  but  the  last — Mr,  Dyce.  Charles, 
entering  from  his  study,  exclaims  : 

"  What  a  noise  is  in  this  house  !    My  head  is  broken 
Within  a  parenthesis  ;  in  every  corner, 
As  if  the  earth  were  shaken  with  some  strange  colic, 
There  are  stirs  and  motions."    Act  iii.  sc.  3. 

This  was  altered  by  Cibber  (in  Love  MaJces  a  Man)  into  "  My  head  is 
broken  with  a  parenthesis  in  every  corner."  And  Weber  thought  the 
words  in  italics  (which  he  conjectured  to  be  a  printer's  direction 
taken  up  into  the  text)  "  as  ridiculous  a  blunder  as  ever  passed  the 
press."  Mr.  Dyce  only  holds  himself  not  at  liberty  to  reject  them, 
and  explains  them  as  follows :  "  Charles  (who  is  always  thinking  of 
books)  seems  to  mean  that  his  head  is  broken  by  the  noise  pressing 
upon  it  as  a  sentence  is  inclosed  within  the  marks  called  parentheses." 
lb.  p.  38.  It  seems  to  me  that  Charles  is  not  likening  the  noise  press- 
ing upon  him  to  the  hooks  of  the  parenthesis,  but  intimating  that, 
in  his  study,  from  which  he  has  just  impatiently  issued,  he  is  sur- 
rounded by  noises,  many  and  various,  as  an  inclosed  sentence  by  the 
main  text  with  its  multitude  of  words,  the  parenthetical  marks  repre- 
senting the  walls  of  his  apartment.  He  was  in  a  parenthesis  in  his 
study  and  the  noises  were  all  around.  Any  one  who  has  had  restless 
fellow-lodgers  in  the  rooms  above  and  below  those  which  he  occupies, 
or  musical  neighbors  on  each  side  of  him  in  a  thin-walled  tenement, 
may  understand  what  it  is  to  have  one's  head  broken  within  a 
parenthesis. 

{gg)  p.  211.  Mr.  Dyce  speaks  of  these  emendations  as  "  not  worth 
citing ;"  and  indeed  they  are  among  the  remarks  which  my  father  him- 
self, I  believe,  would  not  have  reprinted.  His  verbal  criticism  is 
curiously  characteristic ;  but  is  often  too  far-fetched  and  fantastic  to 
be  adopted. 

(Jili)  p.  220.  Mr.  Dyce  says,  surely  the  verse  recommences  at  "  Fill 
me  this  day,"  &c.     Vol.  i. 

I  venture  to  add  from  myself  a  few  suggestions  in  regard  to  the 
text  of  B.  and  F.  The  first  respects  the  sense  of  a  passage  in  The 
Two  Noble  Kinsmen  ,' 

Theseus  speaks  thus  of  Palamon  and  Arcite  : 

"  Bear  them  speedily 
From  our  kind  air  (to  them  unkind)  and  minister 
What  man  to  man  may  do  ;  for  my  sake,  more  ; 
Since  I  have  known  fights'  fury,  friends'  behests, 
Love's  provocations,  zeal  in  a  mistress'  task, 
Desire  of  liberty,  a  fever,  madness, 
'T  hath  set  a  mark  which  Nature  could  not  reach  W 
Without  some  imposition,  sickness  in  will, 


NOTES.  477 

Or  wrestling  strength  in  reason.    For  our  love, 
And  great  Apollo's  mercy,  all  our  best 
Their  best  skill  tender."  Act  i.  e c.  4. 

Dyce's  edit.  vol.  xi.  pp.  351-2. 

Mr.  Dyce  thinks  "the  explanations  which  have  been  offered  of  this 
very  difficult  passage  so  unsatisfactory,"  that  he  omits  them.  Sew- 
ard's and  Weber's  interpretations  seem  to  me  clearly  wrong,  because 
they  both  suppose  that  "  set  a  mark"  refers  to  an  impression  made  on 
the  heart  and  mind  of  the  speaker ; — that  by  "  imposition"  special 
personal  experience  is  signified ;  and  that  Theseus  means  to  say  of 
these  excitements,  that  they  have  produced  an  effect  on  the  spirits  of 
men,  which  Nature  could  not  attain  to  without  some  influence  of 
events  or  circumstances  out  of  the  ordinary  course. — Should  we  not 
rather  read  it  thus  ? — Extraordinary  excitements  have  appointed  and 
rendered  possible  a  higher  degree  of  achievement  than  man's  natural 
strength  could  enable  him  to  perforin  without  something  put  on,  or 
added  to,  his  original  powers,  either  by  the  morbid  force  of  a  disor- 
dered will, — a  frenzied  vehemence  of  action, — or,  on  the  other  hand, 
by  some  special  exertion  and  remarkable  vigor  of  the  higher  faculties 
of  the  soul ;  for,  as  we  sometimes  have  de  una  causa  dos  efectos,  so 
from  two  opposite  causes — disease  of  will  and  strength  of  reason — one 
and  the  same  effect  may  proceed.  "  Set  a  mark"  may  contain  an  al- 
lusion to  archery,  and  refer  to  a  certain  extent  or  quantity  of  achieve- 
ment. The  sentiment  is  perhaps  rather  affectedly  expressed,  because 
here  as  elsewhere  in  this  drama  the  author  seems  to  have  been  imi- 
tating the  pointedness,  pregnancy  and  consequently  partial  obscurity 
of  the  Shaksperian  style.  Few  writers  have  a  clearer,  easier  one  than 
Fletcher,  when  he  is  not  reaching  after  that  of  another  man  and  a 
greater  man  than  himself,  like  Mercury  seeking  to  bend  the  bow  of 
Apollo  or  wield  the  club  of  Hercules. 

In  TJw  Maid's  Tragedy :  Act  i.  sc.  1,  "  Who  hath  he  taken  then  ?" 
says  Melantius  of  Amintor,  on  hearing  that  he  has  forsaken  Aspatia. 
Lysippus,  according  to  Mr.  Dyce,  replies, — 

"  A  lady,  sir, 
That  bears  the  light  above  her,  and  strikes  dead 
With  flashes  of  her  eye."— Vol.  i.  p.  324. 

Weber  adopted  the  reading  of  4to.  1622,  "about  her."  Mason  could 
find  no  sense  in  the  passage  standing  thus,  and  would  substitute, 

That  bears  the  lightning's  power  and  strikes  dead—" 

for  which  B.  and  F.  are  greatly  obliged  to  him  !  It  seems  to  me,  that 
Weber's  reading  is  the  best ;  and  that  "  bears  the  light  above  her" 
would  but  indistinctly  express  "  is  very  superior  to  her :"  while 
"  bears  the  light  about  her"  may  perhaps  mean,  that  she  is  surrounded 
with  a  halo  or  glory,  as  divine  or  super- excellent  persons  are  com- 


178  NOTES. 

monly  represented.  Mr.  Dyce  compares  the  passage  with  what 
Amintor  says  afterwards : 

"  thy  sister 
Accompanied  with  graces  above  her ;" 

but  in  this  line  the  metre  allows  us  to  emphasize  her :  to  do  so  in  the 
other  injures  the  harmony. 

Again  in  Act  iii.  sc.  1.     Mr.  Dyce  points  the  conclusion  of  Amin- 
tor's  speech  thus  : 

"  Stay,  stay,  my  friend ; 
I  fear  this  sound  will  not  become  our  loves ; 
No  more  embrace  me !"— p.  362. 

The  other  editors,  except  Theobald,  point  it  thus  : 

"No  more;  embrace  me!" 

which  appears  to  me  from  the  context,  to  be  right:  for  Amintor  had 
not  been  embracing  him  before,  but  holding  him  off  sadly  and  suspi- 
ciously, to  gaze  upon  him,  when  the  other  would  have  flown  into  his 
arms.  Because  he  had  found  Evadne,  after  all  the  promise  of  her  lu- 
minous brow  and  stately  presence,  base,  false,  degraded ;  he  feels  as 
if  the  brother  was  to  prove  the  same,  spite  of  his  '  noble  looks.' 

"  Now  I  will  outbrave  all,  make  all  my  servants  (drunk) 
And  my  brave  deed  shall  be  writ  in  wine  for  virtuous." 

The  False  One,  Act  ii.  sc.  3. 

Mr.  Dyce  thinks  that  Septimius,  to  whom  these  words  belong,  would 
hardly  go  so  far  as  to  talk  of  making  all  men  his  servants,  and  there- 
fore adds  "  drunk,"  which  gives  the  line  a  totally  different  sense.  But 
the  assassin  has  been  setting  forth  in  lofty  style  the  force  of  gold  : 

"  This  God  creates  new  tongues  and  new  affections, 
And,  though  I  had  killed  my  father,  give  me  gold, 
I'll  make  men  swear  I  have  done  a  pious  sacrifice" 

After  this  flight  to  say  he  would  make  all  (men)  Ms  servants  was  but 
one  waft  higher  than  he  had  flown  before.  On  the  other  hand,  not 
to  mention  the  metrical  awkwardness,  would  it  not  be  too  sudden  a 
descent  to  declare,  that  he  would  make  all  his  servants  drunk  in  order 
that  in  their  tipsiness  they  might  exalt  his  brave  deed — a  fellow  too 
like  Septimius  with  few  servants  if  any  ?  Mr.  Dyce  is  of  opinion  that 
the  second  line,  on  the  common  reading  of  the  first,  is  nonsense. 
"  Why  should  his  brave  deed  be  writ  in  wine  for  virtuous?"  "Writ 
in  wine1'  is  obviously  opposed  to  "  writ  in  water,"  which  occurs  in 
Henry  VIII.*  and  in  Philaster.i  May  we  not  suppose  that  the  vil- 
lain winds  up  his  vain  speech  by  anticipating  that  in  every  joviaJ 

*  Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

t  Act  v.  sc.  9.    See  the  original  in  ruitvll.  Carm.  lxx. 


NOTES.  479 

banquet  in  the  land  his  act  shall  be  extolled  amid  flowing  cups  and 
become  the  theme  of  vinous  eloquence? 

(ii)  p.  220.  The  two  letters  by  Mr.  Kobinson  from  which  these  ox- 
tracts  are  taken,  were  preserved  by  Mrs.  Clarkson  to  whom  they 
were  addressed  and  restored  by  her  to  the  writer,  who,  at  my  en- 
treaty, placed  them  in  my  hands.  I  must  apologize  to  him  for  pre- 
ferring my  judgment  to  his  in  thinking  that  they  will  interest  the  af- 
fectionate readers  of  my  father's  writings,  who  are  thankful  for  any 
portion  of  light,  that  is  cast  upon  his  views  and  intellectual  move- 
ments. In  the  same  note  in  which  my  friend,  Mr.  Eobinson,  ex- 
presses the  opinion  to  which  I  have  just  adverted,  he  relates  of  my 
father: — "I  can  testify  to  his  saying  on  one  occasion,  but  which  I  dc 
not  know,  '  If  all  the  comments  that  have  been  written  on  Shakspeare 
by  his  editors  could  have  been  collected  into  a  pile  and  set  on  fire, 
that  by  the  blaze  Schlegel  might  have  written  his  lectures,  the  world 
would  have  been  equally  a  gainer  by  the  books  destroyed  and  the  book 
written.'  A  better  proof  could  not  be  afforded  that  he  did  not  mean 
to  gain  credit  by  pilfering  thoughts  out  of  a  magazine,  which  he  in- 
vited his  hearers  to  explore."  I  regret  that  Mr.  Eobinson  did  not  at- 
tend and  report  of  all  the  discourses  delivered  by  Mr.  Coleridge  in 
the  Spring  of  1808  ;  but  he  first  became  acquainted  with  my  father, 
and  obtained  admission  to  his  lectures  in  May  of  that  year. 

"  I  am  very  anxious  to  see  Schlegel's  book  (the  Dram.  Vorlesungeri) 
before  the  lectures  commence,"  says  my  father  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Eob- 
inson written  at  the  back  of  a  copy  of  the  prospectus  of  his  lectures 
in  1811,  now  printed  in  this  volume.  This  shows  that  he  first  bo- 
came  acquainted  with  his  fellow-lecturer's  general  views  of  Shak- 
speare three  years  after  he  had  put  forth  his  own  in  1808  ;  and  after 
the  time  when  he  had  prepared  himself  again  to  speak  of  his  "judg- 
ment in  the  construction  of  his  dramas,  in  short  of  all  that  belongs  to 
Lim  as  a  Poet,  and  as  a  dramatic  Poet,  &c."     See  the  Prospectus. 

(kk)  p.  223.  If  Dr.  Bell  was  over-praised,  over-preferred  in  his  life- 
time, he  has  surely  been  too  much  disparaged  and  undervalued  since 
his  departure.  The  plan  of  mutual  tuition,  which  he  brought  into 
use,  was  no  refined  instrument  for  the  production  of  moral  or  intel- 
lectual effects,  but  it  was  a  machinery  for  the  saving  of  adult  labor, 
by  means  of  which  some  portion  of  useful  knowledge  was  imparted 
to  numbers,  who  would  otherwise  have  had  none  at  all.  He  alone  at 
one  period  represented  the  cause  of  national  education  in  connection 
with  the  church :  his  system  kept  the  place,  and  in  some  degree  pre- 
pared the  way,  for  all  the  better  educational  schemes  which  are  at 
this  time  in  actual  operation  or  contemplated.  ISTo  man,  could  have 
done  the  work  which  Dr.  Bell  performed  without  some  remarkable 
endowments ;  and  I  must  ever  think  that,  though  not  of  f  ne  intellect 
or  enlarged  capacity,  he  yet  possessed,  on  his  one  great  theme,  the 


4.80  NOTES. 

nature  of  the  human  mind  in  childhood  and  the  hest  way  of  bringing 
it  happily  into  action,  some  tincture  of  sound  philosophy.  He  con- 
stantly enforced  and  drew  attention  to  the  principle  (not  then  so  gen- 
erally admitted  as  now),  that  Education  is  to  be  speeded  forward  by 
Encouragement,  beckoning  on  from  before,  rather  than  by  Eear  urg- 
ing from  behind ;  because  he  saw  that  the  former  gives  power,  while 
it  inspires  desire,  to  advance ;  the  latter  with  its  envenomed  goad, 
stupefies  in  attempting  to  stimulate:  He  was  always  insisting  on  the 
maxim  that  dulness,  inattention  and  obstinacy  in  the  taught,  gene- 
rally arises  from  want  of  sense,  temper  and  honest  diligence  on  the 
part  of  teachers. 

Dr.  Bell  was  an  enthusiast  of  philanthropy  as  truly,  I  believe,  if  not 
as  nobly  as  Clarkson,  Howard,  or  John  "Wesley,  and  had  within  him 
at  least  a  certain  quantity  of  precious  fire  to  burn  up  somewhat  of 
the  ignorance,  and  consequent  misery,  of  this  world*  It  is  often  ob- 
served that  such  enthusiasm  may  be  neither  the  result  nor  the  accom* 
paniment  of  true  Christian  charity  ;  that  a  man  may  bestow  strength, 
time,  and  money,  on  the  public,  whilst,  in  his  private  sphere,  he  is 
selfish  and  exacting,  or  sensual  and  corrupt ;  that  he  may  be  raising  a 
temple  to  the  honor  of  his  own  inventions,  while  he  thinks  himself  a 
model  of  self-devotedness.  So  far  as  these  remarks  are  true  (and 
perhaps  it  is  not  the  truth,  that  any  man  who  makes  it  the  business 
of  his  life  to  promote  the  general  good,  and  habitually  spends  and  is 
spent  in  that  cause,  has  been  from  the  first  wholly  uninspired  with  a 
pure  and  genuine  zeal),  they  apply  to  all  the  public  agents  of  philan- 
thropy. No  faults  or  failings  that  can  be  imputed  to  Dr.  Bell  disprove 
his  title  to  be  enrolled  in  that  band  ;  nor  ought  he  to  be  denied  the 
credit  due  to  those  whose  aims  in  lifo  are  of  the  higher  sort.  Mr. 
Carl  vie  insists,  that  "the  professional  self-conscious  friends  of  human- 
ity are  the  fatalest  kind  of  persons  to  be  met  with  in  our  day ;"  but 
this  can  be  affirmed  of  those  alone  whose  schemes  are  conceived  un- 
wisely or  without  any  real  regard  to  the  good  of  the  classes  to  be  af- 
fected by  them  ;  surely  it  is  not  "  benevolence  prepense"  or  the  con- 
scious deliberate  endeavor  to  be  fettoic-icor  Jeers  with  God,  that  causes 
such  failures.  Of  Dr.  Bell  it  should  be  remembered  that  at  Swanage 
he  showed  the  same  activity  in  promoting  the  welfare  of  others  in 
obscure  and  unobserved  ways,  which  he  afterwards  displayed  in  more 
noticeable  enterprises  ; — that  he  established  the  straw-plait  manufac- 
tory and  the  practice  of  vaccination  in  a  corner  of  the  land  before  he 
undertook  to  re-model  all  the  schools  of  the  kingdom  on  the  Madras 

*  "  Brother  ITmgletnb,  the  Missionary,  inquired  of  Ram-Dass,  a  Hindoo  man-god,  who 
had  set  up  for  godhead  lately,  what  he  meant  to  do,  then,  with  the  sins  of  mankind  ?  To 
which  Ram-Dass  at  once  answered,  he  had^re  enough  in  him  to  burn  up  all  the  sins  in 
the  world. — Surely  it  is  the  test  of  every  divine  man,  that  he  have  fire  in  him  to  burn  up 
somewhat  of  the  sins  of  the  world,  of  tho  miseries  and  errors  of  the  world  :  why  else 
is  he  there  ?"    Carlyle's  Miscellanies,  vol.  iv.  pp.  290-91. 


NOTES.  48] 

system.*  As  Master  of  Sherborne  Hospital,  he  continued  the  old 
system  in  the  mode  of  dealing  with  ecclesiastical  revenues  a  little 
after  the  time  when  it  began  to  strike  against  the  consciences  of  many ; 
his  conscience  was  not  sensitive  on  the  side  of  church  interests,  and 
his  public  spirit  was  all  flowing  away  in  another  channel.  If  his  mar- 
riage was  not  happy,  here  too,  among  men  of  mark,  he  has  had  too 
many  partners  in  misconduct  or  misfortune;  persons  who  devote 
themselves  to  the  public  are  apt  to  bestow  too  little  thought  or  pains 
on  their  own  private  affairs  ;  what  wonder  if  the  fruit  prove  blighted 
or  bitter,  when  there  has  been  such  carelessness  in  choosing  the  seed 
and  in  attending  to  its  germination  ?  That  in  youth  Dr.  Bell  must 
have  possessed  considerable  personal  attractions,  and  shown  marks 
of  worth,  is  evident  from  the  warm  and  worthy  friends  he  acquired 
by  personal  qualities  alone.  His  conduct  during  the  earlier  part  of 
bis  career  was  distinguished  by  industry  and  earnestness ;  nor  was  it 
wanting  in  private  liberality  and  family  affection.  During  his  employ- 
ment at  Madras  he  gathered  golden  opinions,  and,  had  he  died  at  the 
end  of  it,  would  have  been  remembered,  while  memory  of  him  re- 
mained, as  a  zealous  and  disinterested,  as  well  as  an  able  and  ingeni- 
ous man.  Throughout  the  latter  half  of  a  long  life  his  character 
seems  to  have  deteriorated ;  so  it  will  ever  be  with  men  who,  by  a 
successful  course  of  exertion,  acquire  power  and  importance,  their  in- 
tellectual not  being  on  a  par  with  their  other  personal  endowments, — 
men  in  whom  a  vigorous  body  supports  a  resolute  will,  and  gives  ef- 
fect to  the  suggestions  of  a  quick  and  lively  though  not  enlarged  mind, 
while  clearness  and  depth  of  insight,  freedom  and  foresight  of  thought 
are  not  among  the  gifts  assigned  them,  at  their  birth.  Such  a  piece 
of  mental  mechanism,  wherein  the  practical  faculty  so  predominates 
over  the  reflective — energy  and  perseverance  in  action  so  exceed  the 
power  of  duly  determining  action — is  sure  to  get  wrong  in  the  work- 
ing, and  lose  its  internal  balance  more  and  more.  Success,  long  con- 
tinued, corrupts  the  heart ;  opposition,  which  often  comes  in  full  tide 
at  last  when  little  experienced  at  first,  exacerbates  the  temper ;  and 
meantime  the  ventilation  of  abstract  or  imaginative  thought,  refresh- 
ing and  renovating,  like  a  breeze  that  has  swept  the  plain  of  ocean, 
and  comes  charged  with  the  salubrious  particles  which  it  bears  within 
its  bosom,  is  wanting  to  the  engrossed  and  over-busy  mortal,  who, 
in  the  last  stages  of  his  life's  journey,  while  he  draws  nearer  to  the 
other  world,  is  ever  receding  further  and  further  from  it  in  mental 
preparedness,  and  goes  on  perpetually  increasing  his  burden  as  he 
"  crawls  toward  death."  All  this  which  I  have  said  would  be  brought 
before  the  reader's  mind  more  effectually,  were  he  to  peruse  the  pres- 
ent Mr.  Southey's  Life  of  Dr.  Bell, — a  faithful  and  feeling  record, 
which  must  ever  have  a  place,  I  think,  in  the  great  store-house  of 

*  See  the  Life  of  Dr.  Bell,  vol.  ii.  Chap.  xbc. 
VOL.  IV.  X 


482  NOTES  TO   LEOTUKE   XI IT. 

British  Biography.  Two  paragraphs  of  the  Statesman's  Manual  ano 
devoted  by  my  Father  to  Bell  and  Lancaster  :*  in  one  of  them  lie 
says:  "But  take  even  Dr.  Bell's  original  and  unsophisticated  plan,  which 
I  myself  regard  as  an  especial  gift  of  Providence  to  the  human  race ; 
and  suppose  this  incomparable  machine,  this  vast  moral  steam-engine, 
to  have  been  adopted  and  in  free  motion  throughout  the  Empire ;  it 
would  yet  appear  to  me  a  most  dangerous  delusion  to  rely  on  it  as  if 
this  of  itself  formed  an  efficient  national  education." 


NOTES   TO   LECTURE   XIII. 

OX   POESY   OK   ART. 

{II)  p.  328.  It  has  been  stated  elsewhere  (Biographia  Literaria  In- 
trod.  p.  33),  that  for  many  positions  of  this  Lecture  the  author  was 
indebted  to  Schelling's  admirable  Oration — Ueber  das  Verhdltniss  der 
Bildenden  Kiinste  zu  der  Natur :  Philosophische  Schriften,  pp.  341-96. 
Here,  as  well  as  in  his  Lecture  on  the  Greek  Drama,  Mr.  Coleridge 
seems  to  have  borrowed  from  memory.  A  few  short  sentences  are 
taken  almost  verbatim  ;  but  for  the  most  part  the  thoughts  of  Schel- 
ling  are  mixed  up  with  those  of  the  borrower,  and  I  think  that,  on  a 
careful  comparison  of  the  Lecture  with  the  oration,  any  fair  reader 
will  admit  that,  if  it  be  Schelling's — and  that  the  leading  thought  of 
the  whole  is  his,  I  freely  own,— it  is  Coleridge's  also.  But  this  ques- 
tion every  student  will  be  able  to  decide  for  himself  even  without  go- 
ing beyond  the  present  volume. 

N.B.  The  title  of  Schelling's  Discourse  has  been  commonly  trans- 
lated, On  the  Relation  between  the  Plastic  Arts  and  Nature  ;  yet  the 
term  Plastic  refers  to  Sculpture  exclusively,  and  is  never  applied  either 
by  Schelling  or  Schlegel  to  Painting:  and  Schelling's  discourse  treats 
der  Bildenden  Kiinste,  of  the  figuring  or  imaging  Arts,  in  their  rela- 
tionship to  Nature. f  Bild  is  a  picture,  a  print,  as  well  as  a  graven 
image.  The  verb  TrTidaao)  is  "  strictly  used  of  the  artist  who  works  in 
soft  substances,  such  as  earth,  clay,  wax."  Liddell  and  Scott.  Still 
die  Plastih  is  generally  applied  to  carving  or  sculpture  ;  but  never,  I 
believe,  to  the  mere  expression  of  shape  and  visual  appearance  by 
painting,  drawing,  or  printing. 

•  Works.  I.  p.  4C0. 

t  He  says  of  Raphael,  p.  379.  "  The  bloom  of  the  most  cultiv.ted  life,  the  perfume  of 
fancy,  together  with  the  aroma  of  the  spirit  breathe  forth  unitedly  from  his  works  •"  and 
bis  criticism  on  Oo:reggio,  pp.  378v9,  is  remarkably  genial  and  beautiful. 


NOTES  TO   LECTURE   XIII.  483 

{mm)  p.  328.    See  the  next  note. 

(nn)  p.  330.  Phil.  Schrift.  pp.  344-5.  "  For  the  imaging  art  {dk 
bildenden  Kunst),  in  the  oldest  form  of  expression,  is  styled  a  dumb 
■poetry.  The  author  of  this  definition  doubtless  meant  to  intimate 
thereby  that,  like  Poetry,  it  is  intended  to  express  intellectual  thoughts, 
conceptions,  which  the  soul  originates,  not,  however,  by  means  of 
speech,  but  as  silent  Nature  does,  through  form,  through  sensuous 
works  independent  of  herself.  Thus  the  imaging  or  figuring  art 
stands  evidently  as  an  active  bond  betwixt  the  Soul  and  Nature,  and 
can  be  conceived  only  in  the  vital  mean — in  der  lebendigen  Mitte, — 
between  both.  Yea,  since  its  relationship  with  the  Soul  it  has  in  com- 
mon writh  every  other  art,  and  with  Poetry  in  particular,  that  (rela- 
tion) whereby  it  is  connected  with  Nature,  and  becomes,  like  Nature, 
a  productive  power,  remains  as  the  only  one  that  is  peculiar  to  it : 
and  to  this  alone  can  we  refer  a  theory  which  shall  be  satisfactory  to 
the  understanding,  as  well  as  furthering  and  beneficial  to  art."  Transl. 
Compare  ^also  with  a  passage,  which  will  be  presently  quoted,  in 
p.  352. 

(oo)  p.  230.     See  the  last  note. 

(pp)  P-  230-  lb.  pp.  345-6.  "But  has  not  Science,  then,  always 
recognized  this  relationship  ?  Has  not  every  theory  of  later  times  even 
set  out  from  the  fixed  principle,  that  Art  should  be  the  imitatress  of 
Nature  ?  It  has  so  :  but  what  did  this  broad  general  principle  avail 
the  artist,  amid  the  various  significations  ( Vieldeutigheit)  of  the  con- 
ception of  Nature,  and  when  there  were  almost  as  many  representa- 
tions of  this  Nature  as  different  modes  of  existence  ?" 

(qq)  p.  331.  Compare  with  the  following  passage,  Phil.  Schrift. 
p.  356.  "  How  comes  it  that,  to  every  cultivated  sense,  imitations 
of  the  so  named  real,  carried  even  to  illusion,  appear  in  the  highest 
degree  untruthful, — even  convey  the  impression  of  spectres ;  whereas 
a  work,  in  which  the  idea  is  dominant,  seizes  us  with  the  full 
force  of  truth, — nay,  transports  us  for  the  first  time  into  the  genu- 
ine world  of  reality  ?  Whence  does  this  arise,  save  from  the  more  or 
less  obscure  perception,  which  proclaims,  that  the  idea  is  that  alone 
which  lives  {das  allein  Lebendige)  in  Things : — that  all  else  is  being- 
less  and  empty  shadow  ?" — Tr. 

(tr)  p.  331.  lb.  p.  347.  "  Should  then  the  disciple  of  Nature  imi- 
tate every  thing  in  her  without  distinction,  and  in  every  thing  all  that 
belongs  to  it,  und  von  jedem  jedes?  Only  beautiful  objects,  and 
even  of  these  only  the  beautiful  and  perfect  should  he  repeat."—  Tr. 


484  NOTES  TO  LECTURE  XIII. 

(»)p.-881.  Compare  with  the  following.  lb.  p.  351.  "We  must 
depart  from  the  form  in  order  to  win  it  back  again,  to  win  back  itself  \ 
perceived  as  true,  livingly  and  in  the  light  of  understanding.  Con- 
sider the  most  beautiful  forms,  what  remains,  when  in  thought  you 
have  abstracted  from  them  the  operative  principle?  Nothing  but 
bare  unessential  properties,  such  as  extension  and  space-relationship. 
*****  JSficlit  das  Nebeneinanderseyn  macht  die  Form, — it  is  not 
the  contiguity  or  mutual  nearness  of  parts  that  constitutes  form,  but 
the  manner  thereof  (the  mode  in  which  it  takes  place).  But  this  can 
only  be  determined  through  a  positive  power,  dem  Aussereinander 
vielmehr  entgegenwirlcende  — opposed  even  to  that  condition  of  space 
whereby  things  are  perceived  as  without  one  another,  which  subjects 
the  variety  (or  manifoldness)  of  parts  to  the  unity  of  an  idea  (Begriff) : 
from  the  power  which  works  in  the  crystal  even  to  that  which,  like 
a  soft  magnetic  stream,  gives  to  the  parts  of  matter  in  human  frames 
a  disposition  and  situation  relative  to  one  another,  whereby  the  con- 
ception,— the  essential  unity  and  beauty — can  become  visible." — TV. 
Compare  with  this  passage  the  last  sentence  of  the  first  paragraph  of 
Mr.  C.'s  Lecture. 

(tt)  p.  332.  lb.  p.  353.  "  This  effective  science  is  the  bond  in  Na- 
ture and  Art  between  the  conception  and  form  ;  between  body  and 
soul."— TV. 

(uu)  p.  332.  lb.  p.  852.  "The  science,  through  which  Nature  works, 
is  indeed  like  to  no  human  science,  which  is  united  with  self-reflec- 
tion :  mit  der  Reflexion  Hirer  selbst.  In  it  conception  is  not  distinct 
from  art,  nor  design  separate  from  execution." — Tr. 

(vv)  p.  332.  Compare  with  this  passage  :  Ph.  Schrift.  p.  353.  "  If 
that  artist  is  to  be  accounted  fortunate  and  praiseworthy  beyond  all 
others,  on  whom  the  Gods  have  bestowed  this  creative  spirit,  so  will 
the  work  of  art  appear  excellent  in  that  proportion  wherein  it  shows 
us,  as  in  outline,  this  uncounterfeited  power  of  creation  and  effec- 
tivity."— Tr. 

(ww)  p.  332.  lb.  pp.  353-4.  "  It  has  long  been  perceived  that,  in 
Art,  not  every  thing  is  performed  with  consciousness :  that  with  the 
conscious  activity  an  unconscious  power  must  be  united,  and  that  the 
perfect  union  and  interpenetration  of  these  two  accomplishes  that 
which  is  highest  in  Art.  Works  that  want  this  seal  of  conscious 
science  are  recognized  through  the  sensible  deficiency  of  a  self-sub- 
sistent  life  independent  of  the  life  which  produces  them :  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  where  this  operates,  Art  imparts  to  its  work,  together 
with  the  highest  clearness  of  the  understanding,  that  inscrutable 
reality,  through  which  it  appears  like  to  a  work  of  Nature." 


NOTES  TO  LECTURE  XIII.  485 

"The  attitude  of  the  Artist  toward  Nature  should  frequently  be 
explained  by  the  maxim,  that  Art  in  order  to  be  such,  must,  in  the 
first  instance,  depart  from  Nature,  and  only  return  to  her  in  the  last 
fulfilment.  The  true  sense  of  this  appears  to  be  no  other  than  what 
follows.  In  all  natural  existences  the  living  idea  appears  only  as  a 
blind  agent ;  were  this  true  of  the  Artist,  he  would  not  be  distinguish- 
able from  Nature  in  general.  Were  he  to  subordinate  himself  con- 
sciously and  altogether  to  the  actual,  and  repeat  that  which  exists 
with  servile  fidelity,  he  would  bring  forth  masks  (Laroen),  but  no 
works  of  Art.  For  this  cause  he  must  remove  himself  from  the 
product  or  creature,  but  only  for  the  sake  of  raising  himself  up  to  the 
creative  power,  and  seizing  that  intellectually  or  spiritually.  Hereby 
he  rises  into  the  domain  of  pure  ideas ;  he  forsakes  the  creature  in 
order  to  win  it  back  again  with  a  thousandfold  profit,  and  in  this  way 
he  will  come  back  to  Nature  indeed." — Tr. 

(xx)  p.  333.  lb.  p.  354.  (Next  Sentence)  "  The  Artist  should  by  all 
means  strive  after  that  spirit  of  Nature  which  operates  in  the  inner 
being  of  things  through  form  and  visual  appearance  no  otherwise  than 
as  through  speaking  symbols, — (jenem  im  Innern  der  Dinge  wirTcsa- 
men  (lurch  Form  und  Gestalt  nur  wie  durch  Sinnbilder  redenden  Na- 
turgeist  soil  der  Kunstler  allerdings  nacheifern) :  and  only  in  so  far 
as,  in  his  imitation,  he  livingly  seizes  this,  has  he  himself  produced 
any  thing  of  truth." — Tr. 

Compare  also  with  this  passage,  lb.  p.  348.  "  The  odject  of  imita- 
tion was  altered — imitation  went  on  as  before.  In  the  place  of  Na- 
ture came  the  sublime  works  of  Antiquity,  from  which  the  scholar 
was  occupied  in  taking  the  outward  form,  but  without  the  spirit  that 
filled  it."— TV. 

(yy)  p.  333.  lb.  p.  347.  "  When  we  view  things  not  in  respect  to 
their  essence,  but  to  the  empty  abstract  form,  then  they  speak  not  at 
all  to  the  inward  being  in  ourselves — (so  sagen  sie  auch  unserm  Innern 
nichts):  we  must  put  into  them,  our  own  mind  (Gemiith),  our  own 
spirit,  if  they  are  to  respond  to  us." — Tr. 

(zz)  p.  333.  lb.  p.  355.  "  For  works  which  should  be  the  result  of  a 
combination  of  forms  in  themselves  even  beautiful,  einer  Zusammense- 
tzung  auch  ubrigens  sclumer  Formen,  would  yet  be  devoid  of  beauty, 
inasmuch  as  that  whereby  peculiarly  the  work  or  the  whole  is  beauti- 
ful can  not  be  mere  form, — nichb  mehr  Form  seyn  Tcann.  It  is  above 
Form, — is  Being — the  Universal — the  look  and  expression  of  the  in- 
dwelling Spirit  of  Nature. — Es  ist  iiber  die  Form,  ist  Wesen,  Allge- 
meines.  ist  Blick  und  Ausdruck  des  inwohnenden 


(acta)  p.  334.  lb.  pp.  356-7.     "  By  the  same  principle  (that  the  con- 


186  NOTES   TO   LECTURE   XIIT. 

oeption  {Begriff)  is  the  sole  life  of  things — das  allein  Lebeadige  in  den 
Dijigen),  we  may  explain  all  the  opposed  cases  which  are  adduced  as 
examples  of  the  surpassing  of  Nature  by  Art.  When  it  arrests  the 
swift  course  of  human  years,  when  it  unites  the  vigor  of  full-blown 
manhood  with  the  soft  charm  of  early  youth,  or  presents  a  mother 
of  grown-up  sons  and  daughters  in  the  perfect  condition  of  powerful 
bea'ity,  what  does  it  but  remove  that  which  is  non-essential— Time. 
If  according  to  the  remark  of  the  distinguished  critic  (Kenner),  each 
growth  of  Nature  has  but  a  single  moment  of  true  perfect  beauty,  we 
may  also  say  that  it  has  but  one  moment  of  full  existence.  In  this 
moment  it  is  what  it  is  in  all  eternity  :  beside  this  there  pertains  to  it 
only  a  becoming  and  a  ceasing  to  be.  Art,  in  representing  that  mo- 
ment, lifts  it  out  of  time ;  makes  it  appear  in  its  true  essence,  in  the 
eternity  of  its  life."—  Tr. 

(bid)  p.  334.  lb.  pp.  375-6.  "  But  the  case  appears  to  be  very  differ- 
ent with  Painting  and  with  Sculpture.  For  the  former  represents, 
not  like  the  latter,  through  corporeal  things,  but  through  light  and 
color,  thus  even  through  an  incorporeal  and  in  some  measure  spiritual 
medium." — Tr. 

(ccc)  p.  335.  lb.  p.  348.  "  But  they  (the  lofty  works  of  antiquity) 
are  just  as  unapproachable;  nay,  they  are  more  unapproachable  than 
the  works  of  Nature  ;  they  leave  us  colder  even  than  those  do  ;  unless 
we  bring  with  us  the  spiritual  eye  to  pierce  through  the  husk  or  veil, 
and  perceive  the  operative  energy  within  them." — Tr. 

(ddd)  p.  336.  lb.  p.  357.  "  When  once  we  have  abstracted  from 
form  all  the  Positive  and  Essential,  it  can  not  but  appear  restrictive, 
and,  as  it  were,  hostile  in  respect  of  the  Essence ;  and  the  same 
theory,  which  called  forth  the  false  ineffective  Idealistic,  must,  at  the 
same  time,  tend  to  the  formless  in  Art.  Form  would  indeed  circum- 
scribe the  Essence,  if  it  were  independent  of  it.  But,  if  it  exists  with 
and  through  the  Essence,  how  should  it  feel  itself  restricted  through 
that  which  itself  creates?  Violence  might  be  done  it  by  a  form 
forced  on  it  from  without,  but  never  by  that  which  flows  from  itself. 
On  the  contrary  it  will  rest  satisfied  in  this,  and  find  therein  its  exist- 
ence as  self-subsistent  and  self-included." — Tr. 

(eee)  p.  336.  lb.  pp.  361-2.  "  "Wmkelmann  compares  Beauty  to  water, 
which,  drawn  from  the  bosom  of  the  spring,  is  held  the  purer  the  less 
taste  it  has.  It  is  true  that  the  highest  Beauty  is  characterless  ;  just 
as  we  say  also  that  the  Universe  has  no  determinate  dimension, 
neither  length,  nor  breadth,  nor  depth,  because  it  contains  them  all 
in  a  like  infinitude ;  or  that  the  Art  of  creative  Nature  h  formless 
because  itself  is  subjected  to  no  form." — Tr. 


NOTES   OMITTED.  487 

I  have  now  brought  forward  not  only  every  sentence  in  Schelling's 
Oration  which  has  been  adopted  in  the  Lecture,  but  also,  to  the  best 
of  my  ability,  every  passage  to  which  the  author  can  be  conjectured 
to  have  possibly  owed  a  suggestion.  I  have  translated  the  extracts 
very  literally  with  more  regard  to  exact  fidelity  than  to  idiomatic  ele- 
gance :  and  I  am  not  without  a  hope  that  these  specimens  may  in- 
duce some  readers  to  study.  Schelling's  refined  treatise  at  length  in  the 
original.  An  English  translation  of  it  is  named  as  one  of  the  "  Catho- 
lic Series,"  published  by  Mr.  Chapman,  142,  Strand.  Translations  are 
useful  as  aids  to  a  rapid  perusal  of  the  originals  ;  taken  as  substitutes 
for  them  they  are  apt  in  some  measure,  to  mislead,  and  give  a  par- 
tially false  coloring  to  that  which  they  aim  to  represent. 

ERRATA. 

NOTES   OMITTED. 

pp.  105-6.  "  The  art  displayed  in  the  character  of  Cleopatra  is  pro- 
found," and  Schlegel  says  of  this  heroine:  uThe  coquettish  arts  of 
Cleopatra  are  displayed  without  reserve :  she  is  an  equivocal  creature, 
made  up  of  regal  pride,  womanish  vanity,  voluptuousness,  fickleness, 
and  true  attachment.  Although  the  passion  she  feels  and  inspires  is 
devoid  of  moral  dignity,  it  yet  excites  interest  as  an  invincible  fascina- 
tion. The  lovers  seem  formed  for  each  other,  Cleopatra  being  as  sin- 
gular in  her  seductive  charms  as  Antony  in  the  splendor  of  his  achieve- 
ments."    Vol.  iv.  p.  20,  edit.  2.     Lecture  xii.  now  xxvi. 

p.  118.  u — glorious  subjects ;' especially  Henry  I.  &c.  &c,  and 
Henry  VII."  "  This  has  been  already  done  by  Ford"  a  reviewer  sug- 
gested, in  his  fine  Tragedy  of  Perlcin  Warbeck,  brought  upon  the  stage 
by  Macklin  in  a  modernized  form." 

Of  Macklin's  performance  this  anecdote  is  told  by  Badeley,  the  Ac- 
tor : — "  I  was  sitting  one  evening  at  the  Cider  Cellar  with  Macklin, 
and  incidentally  observed  (for  I  was  not  very  deeply  read  in  theatri- 
cal history),  that  I  wondered  there  had  not  been  a  play  written  on  the 
story  of  Perkin  Warbeck.  'There  has,  sir,'  gruffly  replied  Macklin. 
s  Indeed !  and  how  did  it  succeed  V  '  It  was  damned,  sir.'  '  Bless 
me !  it  must  have  been  very  ill  written  then — such  a  story !  Pray, 
Mr.  Macklin,  who  was  the  stupid  author?'  'I,  sir!'  roared  the 
veteran,  in  a  tone  that  took  away,  continued  Badeley,  all  desire  to 
renew  the  conversation."  Gilford's  edition  of  Ford,  vol.  ii.  Introduc- 
tion to  Perlcin  Warbecle.  In  the  MS*  Notes  to  Langbaine,  by  Oldys, 
quoted  by  Gifford,  Macklin's  "  silly  performance"  is  spoken  of,  as  if  it 
were  no  revival  of  Ford's  play,  but  an  original  composition.  It  was 
produced  in  December,  1745,  on  occasion  of  the  rebellion  under  the 
Pretender's  eldest  son ;  and  another  drama  on  the  same  story  was 


488  NOTES   OMITTED. 

brought  out  at  the  same  time  by  Joseph  Elderton,  a  young  Attor- 
ney. 

p.  178. — "  seeming  justification  of  our  blackamoor  or  negro  Othello." 
"  I  believe,"  says  an  anonymous  critic,  "  in  one  edition  of  Coryatfa 
Crudities  there  is  a  drawing  of  the  Venetian  General,  Othello,  repre- 
senting him  tawny.  Schlegel's  reasons  for  Othello's  blackness  might 
be  compared  with  Coleridge's  against  it."  Schlegel's  view  of  the  sub- 
ject is  as  follows:  "What  a  happy  mistake  it  was  that  led  Shak- 
speare  to  convert  '  the  Moor,'  under  which  name,  in  the  original  story, 
a  baptized  Saracen  of  the  Northern  coast  of  Africa  was  unquestionably 
meant,  into  a  proper  negro  !  We  recognize  in  Othello  the  wild  nature 
of  that  burning  zone,  which  produces  the  most  violent  beasts  of  prey, 
and  the  deadliest  poisons,  subdued  in  appearance  only  by  love  of  fame, 
by  foreign  laws  of  honor,  and  by  nobler  and  milder  manners.  His 
jealousy  is  not  that  jealousy  of  the  heart  which  is  compatible  with 
the  tenderest  sensibility  and  devotedness  toward  the  beloved  object ; 
it  is  that  sensual  frenzy,  which  in  torrid  climes  has  produced  the  un- 
worthy confinement  of  women  and  other  unnatural  usages.  A  drop 
of  this  poison  shed  in  his  veins  sets  his  whole  blood  in  a  ferment. 
The  Moor  appears  noble,  open,  confiding,  grateful  for  the  love  shown 
him ; — and  he  is  all  this  ;  and,  furthermore,  he  is  a  hero,  who  despises 
danger,  a  worthy  commander  of  armies,  a  true  servant  of  the  state ; 
but  in  a  moment  the  mere  physical  force  of  passion  overthrows  all  his 
acquired  and  habitual  virtues,  and  gives  the  upper  hand  to  the  savage 
over  the  cultivated  man  in  his  nature.  Even  in  the  expression  of  his 
rage  to  revenge  himself  on  Cassio,  the  despotism  of  the  blood  over 
the  will  betrays  itself.  At  last,  in  his  repentance,  a  genuine  tender- 
ness for  his  murdered  wife  and  anguish  from  the  sense  of  honor  de- 
stroyed speak  out  of  him  in  presence  of  the  witnesses  of  his  deed : 
and  in  the  midst  of  all  this  he  falls  upon  himself  with  the  fury  with 
which  a  tyrant  tortures  a  rebellious  slave.  He  suffers,  like  a  double 
man,  at  once  in  the  higher  and  the  lower  sphere  into  which  his  being 
is  divided."    Vol.  iii.  pp.  288,  9.     Lecture  xii.  (xxv.) 

p.  291. — "  the  crusading  armaments."  There  must  have  been  some 
mistake  in  the  report  of  this  passage,  if  not  in  the  original  conception 
of  it ;  for  the  last  crusades  were  undertaken  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
.thirteenth  century ;  Dante's  poetry  was  not  produced  till  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fourteenth.  The  error  was  noted  in  a  critique  on  the  Lit. 
Rem. 

The  Signature  S.  C.  has  been  omitted  by  mistake  in  two  or  three 
Notes  at  the  foot  of  the  page. 


END   OF    VOL     IV. 


